"Disposed" by Khadijah Queen

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend April 3, 2018   Disposed   Khadijah Queen

Gear adrift I say—a phrasal anchor in me & here at the summit no one I know knows what it means. I stay neat & ask What did I imagine better before work before that last time breaking One Tuesday I volunteered & never again The drumbeat softens & I still decline to admit how cowardly & shipwrecked I feel so many miles from the equator How fast can I choose differently a presence I pretend In the darkest sweater I own I'm almost cold                Copyright © 2018 Khadijah Queen. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "Over the past few months, I've been reading Melville for the first time and writing nonfiction about my time in the Navy. My thinking began to encompass the nature of work, the body's abilities and disabilities, and the choices we make about our lives. Gear adrift means something that is not stowed in its proper place, that could become a hazard under certain circumstances at sea. If I was trying for anything, I suppose it would be the comparison between that gear adrift and a person adrift, whether discarded or not belonging—but not even sure they want to belong. Disposed, then, has potential for a double meaning: either tossed away or inclined—as in an asserted feeling." —Khadijah Queen   Khadijah Queen's most recent book is I'm So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On (YesYes Books, 2017). She teaches in the low-residency Mile-High MFA program at Regis University and is a visiting professor in creative writing at University of Colorado Boulder.   Photo credit: Michael Teak Poetry by Queen   I'm So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On (YesYes Books, 2017) "Song Book" by Naomi Shihab Nye "Syllabus for the Dark Ahead" by Jehanne Dubrow "Blue Vase" by Cynthia Zarin April Guest Editor: Tracy K. Smith   Thanks to Tracy K. Smith, United States poet laureate and author of Life on Mars (Graywolf Press, 2011), who curated Poem-a-Day this month. Read more about Smith and our guest editors for the year. Help Support Poem-a-Day   If you value Poem-a-Day, please consider a monthly donation or one-time gift to help make it possible. Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today's poets each weekday morning. The free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thank you! 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