You know what? I’m going to make the decision myself, I’m very inspired by “Twilight,” I don’t want a summer wedding, I don’t want to be sweaty, You’re right, it can’t last forever, It’s way beyond pretend, I have mad options, and There’s only one Mary O’Shea.
Susan Thomsen, draft April 2026. This poem and its title consist of lines from various overheard conversations in New York, with just a couple of tweaks for sense.I call these works "street poems."
Later I remembered the "Twilight" girl on the train. She (unknowingly) supplied several lines of what ultimately became the poem above. So, twilight poem #2! Fittingly, I composed the first draft on MetroNorth, which connects New York and some of the suburbs.
Heidi Mordhorst will host the round up of Poetry Friday posts for April 17th. Go, read!
Poetry Friday has come around again, and this week I chose Muriel Rukeyser’s “Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars),” which begins:
"I lived in the first century of world wars. Most mornings I would be more or less insane"
You can read the rest of the poem at the Poetry Foundation. Thanks to some Bluesky users for mentioning this one the other day. Its initial publication date is 1968! The despair, as well as the desire for peace and reconciliation, make sense for that awful year, and I'm amazed at how well it works for our era, not to mention just this past week, with its "various devices," the continual selling, and "careless stories."
Longtime Poetry Friday contributor Marcie Flinchum Atkins is celebrating the release of her new picture book, When Twilight Comes: The Animals and Plants That Bring Dusk and Dawn to Life. Congratulations to Marcie! She invited us to share a twilight poem or image, and I chose “Darklight,” by Rosanna Warren, from the Yale Review. It is so atmospheric. The poem begins,
“The moon dragged her string-net bag of shadows through the boughs as we felt our way along the night road, gravel crackling under our feet”
For today’s Poetry Friday selection I chose Tiana Clark’s “My Therapist Wants to Know about My Relationship to Work,” which you can read over at the Poetry Foundation. Plus also, you can listen to the poet herself reading it, which I recommend. This post’s title is from one of its verses. I love how Clark uses language in unexpected ways, as in “I stutter the page” and “I short/my breath.”
“My Therapist Wants to Know About My Relationship to Work” appears in Clark’s most recent collection, Scorched Earth, a finalist for the 2025 National Book Award for Poetry.
This poem by Essex Hemphill is part of “Poetry in Motion,” a collaboration between the Poetry Society of America and New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA). The program has been zipping along for more than 30 years, and I’m always happy to bump into the poems on the subway, commuter train, etc. “Poetry in Motion” has spread to other cities as well; for example, Nashville participates during April, National Poetry Month. I saw “Thread” on the shuttle from Grand Central Terminal to the Times Square station, and fell hard for “I am wind/and you/are chimes.”
Read more about the poet and about artist Jeffrey Gibson here.
Green tips of tulips are rising out of the earth Although we can’t see their shy peeks After a bomb cyclone dropped a cargo of snow Onto everything under the sun Don’t call it a blizzard! Just imagine the tulips— the Blue Wows, the Honeymoons— Waiting patiently to show us their spring.
(With a first line from Arthur Sze's "Black Center.")
Draft, Susan Thomsen, 2026
This month the Poetry Sisters are looking to poems by Arthur Sze, the current U.S. Poet Laureate, for inspiration. (See Tanita S. Davis's blog for details.) I was intrigued by their idea and open invitation, and decided to join in, taking the first line of Sze's "Black Center" and seeing where it led. The poem presented a real bouquet of images and language, and choosing only one line to borrow was hard. "Black Center" comes from the collection Sight Lines (2019), and you can read the poem at the publisher Copper Canyon.
The Poetry Friday roundup is at the talented Margaret Simon's Reflections on the Teche on February 27th.
I stop somewhere waiting for you And soon you swoosh by In a spray of snow. Possibly under control, Probably not. Bearing straight for the lift line, Already too far away to hear, “Turn, Use your edges!” Arms wide, skis parallel, Unzipped jacket blowing back like The trailing edges of wings, How fast that little body hurls down the mountain, And how beautiful the last-minute swerve.
Draft, Susan Thomsen, 2026 (The first line is the last line of Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself.")
*****
Welcome to Poetry Friday! The roundup is here. “Flurries of Winter” was inspired by a prompt from David Lehman. It’s so fun to see that others have joined me in “stopping somewhere,” too; please see Mr. Linky for the connections.
Thank you so much for visiting. Please drop a link while I heat up the hors d’oeuvres in the kitchen. Welcome to all, including newcomers!
In This Poem You’ll Find Some Coffee
Because I once made a list of
Everything I’d like to see in a poem
And it started with coffee.
I knew what I knew
But when I wrote it all out
It didn’t make me feel happy,
Only a little less mysterious.
I haven’t made a list of
Everybody I’d like to
See still alive, but at the top
Would be Mom, Dad, and Auntie.
Auntie told the cousins
That my apartment wasn’t
Big enough to swing a cat in
And that my mother loaded
The dishwasher wrong.
Mom and I liked to drink coffee
Every day around three
Sometimes she’d made a cake and
We’d have that, too.
I can’t remember
If cake is on my list
But it should be.
Dad talked to me in Spanish
He was from Texas and he
Loved to speak Spanish
When I got to sixth grade
I knew madre, padre, casa, and
All the Mexican phrases for hurry up.
I never told any of them
About being drunk in the Village
And ordering espresso when I meant
Cappuccino and how disappointed
I was in the size of the cup and the taste.
I’d love a conversation with Auntie
About the right ways to load a dishwasher.
Draft, Susan Thomsen, 2026*****
I wrote this while reading Human Hours, Catherine Barnett's 2018 collection published by Graywolf Press. I liked the way one of the poems started with the title as the first line, which solves a problem I was worrying about last week. Also, in "Uncertainty Principle at Dawn," the speaker mentioned "a list of obsessions" (I don't want to quote any more; it's so good and I don't want to spoil it), and I thought, "Oh, lists, yes, I have lists galore!"
Robyn Hood Black rounds up the Poetry Friday contributions on February 13th.
Please join me here at Chicken Spaghetti for Poetry Friday next week, when I'll be wearing a colorful hostess outfit and passing canapés. If you'd like to, you can write from the same prompt I used: begin a poem with the last line of Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself," which is “I stop somewhere waiting for you.” Details here. First-time participants are always welcome.
Photo by Susan Thomsen
Chen Chen told the Yale Review that he usually starts a poem with the title. I love his “Tale of the Blueberries” and his words about the process of creating, “picking up an odd clue here, an ordinary mystery there.”
Titles often elude me, so just for fun (and inspiration), I looked through the Yale Review‘s Poems of the Week for recent ones, and found many that appealed, including “Fan Mail from Some Flounder?” (Harryette Mullen), “Pearly Everlasting” (Alissa Quart), “Literal Country Music” (Samuel Cheney), and “In My Terrible Years” (Aldo Amparán).
For February 20th, I have written to a prompt from David Lehman (of the Best American Poetry series): begin a poem with the last line of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself, ” which is “I stop somewhere waiting for you.” Do join me if you’d like. I even asked AI to suggest titles for this poem, but they were SEO-oriented duds. Stay tuned.
The Poetry Friday roundup for February 6th is at Molly Hogan’s Nix the Comfort Zone.
Chicken Spaghetti 