From the Peninsula by Ishion Hutchinson

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend May 17, 2016   From the Peninsula   Ishion Hutchinson

The old trees shake out medals at midday to the ship paused for a meteor’s blunting glimpse in the windy yellow of the water,   partway to inventing another world. Through the window’s tiger slats, the bakery pumps smoke, years between   her irretrievable shawl, which crimsons what I see, watching further and further, until canisters shatter into nitrate stars,   late at night, saluting an unforgiving song. I tilt down on her iron bed and cluster haunted basil, the scent rifts morning open to argon of cobwebs, the dim cargo, the bent hills, the black gold, her hands, clasped shut her children, long gone, under the sea.            Copyright © 2016 Ishion Hutchinson. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “My grandmother, Aunt May, was a gifted baker, and in the limit of her kitchen, as in the limit of the poverty she lived through, she made bread that was my joy.” —Ishion Hutchinson   Ishion Hutchinson was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica. He is the author of House of Lords and Commons (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016) and teaches at Cornell University.   Photo credit: Rachel Eliza Griffiths  Poetry by Hutchinson   House of Lords and Commons (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016) "The Lovers of the Poor" by Gwendolyn Brooks "Believing in Iron" by Yusef Komunyakaa "Wonder as Wander" by Sharon Olds Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends.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