Hannah Dela Cruz Abrams's Blog

By Frank O’Hara:

Animals

Have you forgotten what we were like then

when we were still first rate

and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth

It’s not use worrying about Time

but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves

and turned some sharp corners

the whole pasture looked like our meal

we didn’t need speedometers

we could manage cocktails out of ice and water

I wouldn’t want to be faster

or greener than now if you were with me O you

were the best of all my days

[1950]

with Brigit Pegeen Kelly (1951-2016).

. . . They would
Wake in the night thinking they heard the wind in the trees
Or a night bird, but their hearts beating harder. There
Would be a whistle, a hum, a high murmur, and, at last, a song,
The low song a lost boy sings remembering his mother's call.
Not a cruel song, no, no, not cruel at all. This song
Is sweet. It is sweet. The heart dies of this sweetness.

from “Song”

Yesterday at dusk, out on a walk, I saw another fox. The roads were empty, and the fox stopped in the center lane to look at me. I watched as it turned and limped into the treeline. Perhaps it was hurt, or perhaps foxes always appear to be limping prettily and daintily to me. In any case, a red-tailed hawk swooped low over my shoulder and vanished after it. I could have reached up and grazed the bird's belly with my fingertips. That hawk ate an opossum a few evenings ago. My neighbor made a f...

Late last night, at around midnight, we rode bikes far out into the marsh over the rain-slicked wood jetties. Heat lightning over the sound and the ocean, and the tall grass lit and the sea did too and it all went on forever.

Here's a poem's been on my mind lately. 'Wild Geese' by Mary Oliver...

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despa...

Oversimplified, it goes like this:

Return to Anne Carson's 'Short Talk on Shelter' -- fish heart diagram -- etymology of ventricle, of atrium -- memory of moment -- vicious pruning of moment -- fictionalizing moment -- braiding, drafting, editing -- braiding, drafting, editing -- send to Eric -- cut, cut, cut, reposition, reformat, retitle -- poem?

And running under this whole rickety hull is a benthic depth of struggle.

Notes and a fish heart diagram drawn with a shaky hand.

I'll leave you wi...

My hope was to do these quick sketch-poem-interviews more regularly, but it's summer and this year has been like a hopeful drive to somewhere you eventually realize does not exist, so can you blame me for winging it out to the ocean at every opportunity--and anyway, the sound grass is already going blond this late July.

A thing I inked rapidly after rereading 'Spark of the Sky Stag’s Great Heart'

So, maybe read this poem from Sarah Messer now but then again when you are home after many hour...

About a month and a half ago, my little sister saved my life with a letter. It arrived just after I'd done something stupid, and her note, which said she needed me, made me undo the stupid thing. I reversed back into being and started going forward. But because this direction is not always easy and because life is not always an graceful fight, I've been hunting down other letters.

Happily, the best thing about my position in this world is that I've somehow careened into the orbit of some insan...

Lahiri said he taught her to insist upon the right words. Some of his passages had wings fluttering in my aching throat. I don't have much to add; others of my friends knew him far better. But I loved his writing, and so I loved him. And I hope if there's anything that comes after, in any form, that it is as beautiful as his sentences.

'We dash the black river, its flats smooth as stone. Not a ship, not a dinghy, not one cry of white. The water lies broken, cracked from the wind. This great es...

I was born with a predisposition, maybe. The recipe for it carried like a stowaway in the secret, destructive chemistry of my brain. When I was sick, I beat a retreat from the world. Coming back, even partway, has been hard. It's been easier to live in the body's pain than the mind's. Than the world's.

How much should a person walk their interior. Or travel society's prism of triggers. Eric Kandel's In Search of Memory says we lay down proteins every time we revisit a memory, building it and m...

My mind is restless and sluggish as this slow-moving storm. I've been trying to edit an essay, turning over and over a line Woolf jotted down in her diary. Pacing inside that one sentence for over a week, I realized I had misunderstood it. But I need time to fix my mistake, so I'm sleepless, listening to the rain, the tree limbs fall, the transformers blow, and smashing myself against these lines. Read them yourself and feel the flutter of your fragile heart.

Borrowed Love Poems

1.

What can I do...