Anthem by Melissa Stein

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend February 5, 2016   Anthem   Melissa Stein

We were all in love but didn’t know it. We were all in love continually. Bless our little hearts, smoking and drinking and wrecking things. Bless our shameless shame. We were loud, invincible. We were tough as rails. We stole street signs and knocked over bins. Ripped the boards off boarded-up stuff. Slept in towers filled with pigeon shit and fluff. We kicked beer bottles down cobbled lanes. Tires and chains. Chains and wheels and skin. The world was always ending and we the inventors of everything.                Copyright © 2016 Melissa Stein. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “I grew up near Philadelphia and lived in the city for many years. One day I found myself writing a sort of ode to the rough-and-tumble urban landscape of those times. After the poem was finished, I realized I’d left out one of the most seminal elements of our teens and early twenties: music. The poem’s title is my homage.” —Melissa Stein   Melissa Stein is the author of Rough Honey (Copper Canyon Press, 2010). She is a freelance editor and writer in San Francisco.   Photo credit: John F. Martin  Poetry by Stein   Rough Honey (Copper Canyon Press, 2010) "Mimosa" by Mary Ruefle "Time Passes" by Joy Ladin "Current" by Alan Soldofsky Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038