Emilia Phillips
The way that the sea fails

to drown itself every day. And entendre alludes all those not listening.

The way unfertilized chicken eggs fail to have imagination,
dozened out in their cardboard trays,

by which I mean they will never break
open

from the inside. The way my imagination (née anxiety) has
bad brakes and a need

to stop sometimes. The way I didn't believe

it when he told me we were going to crash into the car idling
at a red light

ahead of us. To know our future like that seemed unlikely.
But to have time to tell me?

—Nearly impossible. I may have broken
several ribs that day

but I will never know for sure. I'm okay,

I guessed aloud to the paramedic. It doesn't matter
if you're broken if you're broke,

I moaned in bed that night, after several glasses
of cheap red. I thought it would make a good blues

refrain. I made myself
laugh and so I made myself hurt—

Memoirs by Emilia Phillips, goes the joke.

A friend of mine competes in beard and mustache tournaments,
even though she can't grow one herself—

Once, she donned a Santa Claus made entirely out of hot-glued tampons.

It was as white as the spots in memories I doubt.

The first woman
I kissed who had never kissed a woman before

couldn't get over how soft my face is,
even the scar. Once,

a famous poet said what's this and touched my face
without asking—

his thumb like a cat's tongue on the old wound.

He must have thought he was giving
me a blessing.
from the book EMBOUCHURE / University of Akron Press
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Color photograph of a laughing Stewart Kestenbaum with Maine's governor
"New Maine Poet Laureate Sought"
 
"The Maine Arts Commission has launched its search for a new state poet laureate to succeed Deer Isle poet Stuart Kestenbaum for a five-year term....'We are so grateful to Stu for his wonderful work as poet laureate,' said Arts Commission Executive Director David Greenham."

via THE ELLSWORTH AMERICAN
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Cover of Robert Hayden's Collected Poems
What Sparks Poetry:
Rion Scott on Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays"

"I often think about the precision in Hayden's language. The words that take on the work of casting several meanings. 'What did I know, what did I know/of love’s austere and lonely offices?' I know all the words he used, but in this formation, with the repetition, the odd use of the word 'offices' and its proximity to the words 'austere' and 'lonely,' the words seem alien and strange in the best way."
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