The Most Popular Poetic Journalism of 2020
A look back on a the year that was, via the most-read poetry on Poets Reading the News.
Stop Touching Your Fate
By Hilary King, published July 7, 2020
Life lingers on the fingertips.
Work, home, love, all
that you binged,
all that you scrolled
seeps into whorls
at the edge
of your existence.
Eyes the windows
to the soul, lips the steps
into the heart, skin
the seal between the bones
of the world and you.
Wash your hands with kindness,
with compassion, with the fragrant,
bubbling soap of joy. Now,
touch your face.
Transmission
By Alice Liang, published January 30, 2020
In my old city, the streets are confused. The birds wait
to be scared. In the silence, the borders grow
another border. A train starts to brown. A baby is born.
Overseas, we do the helpless accounting of new cases
confirmed. Scanning for names of lost lovers
and brothers beloved, praying to our different gods.
In Chinatown, we swim among the families of fish,
imported, flown, the sea and the sky, the same,
acrid among the wash of the teeming streets.
Overnight, cities close in, flights stop midair. The moon
goes dark. The new year holds its breath. The truth
mutates. We cut the strings between us.
But this is a ghost war. We are dying
living apart from each other. In my new city,
feet fly away from our Chinese faces,
Their masks the shape of fear, calling us wild,
calling us unclean, calling us unholy.
Mama, I am in a virus called America
And I don’t want to keep counting. I want to eat
at every grandmother’s empty wooden table
and teach every last child how to sing.
How does a virus sense another warm body?
Is it the feral taste of home, or the gentle waste
of memory, blooming in the defenseless distance?
In the old hospital, the counts only keep counting.
Every sneeze is someone praying: I miss you,
I miss you, calls the diasporic disease.
The Tyger King
By Clint Margrave, published April 12, 2020
after William Blake
Tyger King Tyger King, burning bright,
In the Wynnewood zoo at night;
What exotic hand or eye,
Could frame thy feline symmetry?
In what distant debt or spite.
Burnt the studio of thy life?
On what arson dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare start the fire?
And what conspiracy, & what strip club,
Could stop a hitman from his job?
And when the Feds began to beat,
What dread handcuffs? & what dread plea?
What the tattoos? what the chain,
And what’s that mullet behind thy brain?
What the candidate? what dread cost,
Could win a fifth of voters’ trust!
When the scared threw down their spears
And water’d Netflix with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made that bitch Carole Baskin make thee?
Tyger King Tyger King, burning bright,
In the Wynnewood zoo at night:
What exotic hand or eye,
Dare frame thy feline symmetry?
Amplitude
By Zoë Ryder White, Published on March 14, 2020
I am suddenly aware of the surface of my palms,
the skin of my face, the distance between
my surfaces and inanimate, touchable surfaces
at the grocery store, the distance
between my animate surfaces
and the animate surfaces of loved bodies
and strange bodies. I do not yet deeply miss
the casual touch of a hand on a shoulder,
a bending together of heads,
but I will miss it, I will: genetic sequences
calling out for the days of the pack
curled together in sleep; our breathing,
our working hearts just a couple of ribcages
distant. If we are not lonely yet, we are about to long
for each other’s company: for concert sweat, for
are you thirsty, have a sip from my bottle; look,
the ball went through the hoop! Let’s stand and yell
and slap each other’s backs, let’s breathe
each other’s exhalations, utterly unconcerned.
Saving City Lights
By Gary Margolis, published on April 15, 2020
Let the bookstore owner leave
a light.
The only light in the center
of the city.
Setting its timer to turn on
at sunrise.
A good hour to open
your eyes, turn
to the book left-open
on your nightstand.
Pick up where you left-
off. In the story.
In the poem.
In the book
you found,
in a bin
at the bottom
of the circular
stairs.
The day you found
yourself standing
next to the owner,
Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Who’s still living.
beyond his hundred years
on your bookshelf.
Who hand-wrote
in his New Directions
book Back Roads
to Far Places
“fish float through
the trees eating the seeds
of the sun.”
An image that’s lived
inside you
in hard and city-
lit times.
As well as the lines
on one of the numberless
pages “loneliness
sets its own lamp
alight.”
Which you tell me
is almost impossible
to feel holding
a small, black and white
book in your hands.
The sun swimming through
the pond. Its shadows
of printed branches.
Loves Notes and Dissent
by Catherine Strayhall, published on November 2, 2020
after langston hughes and emma lazarus
no time for grief; not anymore. a
neighbor needs you. a sister needs
you. a stranger needs you. so wear
your mask proudly. read langston
loudly, let america be truth to
devastation. let it be love notes
to each other. let love notes be
black ink on ballots and lace-
collared dissent. let dissent be
the hands we hold out to each
other. let our hands be the
bridges we’re building. let our
bridges cross miles, oceans,
origins. let our origins be everywhere
someone is dreaming. let our dreams
be without cages, without tear gas,
without walls. let our walls be a
memory. let our memories be
unflinching. let our unflinching
hearts crack, but let them crack open.
let our open arms lock together and
embrace the yearning to breathe
free. let our freedom be our
responsibility, our responsibility
our outrage, our outrage
our hope. let our hope be a
promise to do better than our
histories. let the histories we write
be something we’re proud of
tomorrow. let tomorrow be the time
we stand though we’re shaking. let
our stand be remembered as a
transmutation of grief; as the future
we forge from these ashes and nights.
and let our nights lead to brilliant,
incandescent dawns — grateful sunrises.
we exist side-by-side, reading poetry to
november air, pledging ourselves to each
other in that fragile valor called faith
New to Poets Reading the News? Check out our site and connect with us on Facebook for breaking poetry on current events.
