This week's Poet of the People is Amy Drennan. To meet Amy is to walk into bright sunshine. She is Charleston's house mother of lost poets. She is a gifted writer and poet who feeds and houses poets who need a safe place to land and sacrifices her opportunity to shine to promote others. She is a gift and a treasure and my friend.
Amy Drennan was born and raised in Los Angeles CA. As a reluctant military spouse, she’s lived all over the states, and now calls Charleston SC, her permanent home. She is an advertising executive, an above-average wife, and mom to several exceptional humans, a scraggly dog, and anyone who finds themselves in need of some love. She enjoys writing, as her Irish heritage has rendered her impervious to traditional forms of therapy.
If You’d Tried
It’s ok.
I’m a bit much.
Not everyone likes a woman
with a gap in her teeth
who cries
a lot.
Some can’t handle a bunch of words,
being fed all the time.
Some prefer hungry.
I’d just tell you
you’re beautiful every day.
You wouldn’t want to hear it,
couldn’t bear it,
already know and don’t need it.
Maybe you don’t have needs.
You may not like your name
when I say it.
I’ve whispered your name
into a few mouths.
Some don’t care for whispering.
Some don’t like their mouths.
There’s peach fuzz
at the base of my back.
It’s ok to dislike peaches
and my back.
The way I’d curl it into you.
The way I’d arch it in your honor.
Some prefer the front,
like to see what they’re dealing with.
I’d love you so softly,
so loudly,
you’d be sick of it by now.
Maybe heat isn’t your thing.
You’ve been burned,
had your fingertips singed off.
You don’t touch anything warm now,
you promised.
I have freckles on my freckles.
Maybe you don’t like freckles.
Maybe you’d learn to love them.
I’d have shaved my legs for you,
if you’d told me you were coming.
Do you like women in bathtubs?
What if they stay there
till sunrise,
writing and not sleeping,
writing about not sleeping?
Would you like to not sleep with me?
You wrote your number for me
on a notepad, a matchbook,
the back of my hand.
I didn’t keep it, it kept me.
I’m calling you from up North,
down South,
out East.
Somewhere you’ve never been,
have always wanted to go.
You might think I’m a firefly, a star,
Christmas lights in June.
From this distance there’s no telling.
We could be night sky.
Two blinks to navigate by.
Point A and point me.
The shortest distance between us,
a wish.
We could’ve found each other
if you’d tried.
Kissing a man without lips
Last night I dreamt a tiny tooth
broken on your boyhood gums
sunk into the flesh
of my cellulite thigh,
my stretch marked hip,
my salt lick neck,
my all I have is yours,
if you’d like it.
The first time you planted in me
up came everything hardy,
hungry,
difficult to kill.
It’s peach season in the south.
You can travel there
without leaving the West.
You can wipe sticky sweet
from your chin,
eat till your belly hurts,
till Summer is an abomination.
I am a fire you set.
A sun plucked from its sky,
made brighter for shining
in dark places.
My memory is thick and unforgiving,
but yesterday you is forgotten.
I can’t recall you before you now.
Punch drink me,
and you a punch pourer.
A lover of your own reflection.
I make an awfully good mirror.
What I will tell your daughter
who is old enough to ask
Your dad was maddening
and he was loved
He held his ear
to a glass
held the glass
to my chest
he listened
he listened harder than anyone
He heard pins drop
secrets spill
belly aches and butterflies
He heard pieces break
the push-pull
of stitching back together
He washed my hair once
I didn’t ask
but he heard me
always listening
He had the softest spots
the brokenest bits
he thought himself ugly
but he cried like music
when he cried
he was the bluest
most beautiful boy
Not sorry
You are sorry not sorry
‘bout the fire you’ve become.
By the time you read this,
I’ll have flown the coop.
By the time you see this,
I’ll be blue eye disappeared.
I loved more
than either wing,
gave up flight for you,
stopped singing.
Each leaf I know
has turned color
and dropped.
Every leave I know
has left.
I’ve gone gone before.
Old news,
fresh ink,
ablaze in the end.
I wove you a bed
you’d never need,
stepped lightly over,
apologized never.
Don’t deliver the news of our deaths
Repeat after me.
We are ok.
It’s all ok.
We can breathe
don’t need to breathe
to be here.
We don’t die,
we make room.
We are enough light
to fill a teacup,
a sky,
a memory full of here
and gone again.
Bushels of babies are born
while grievers grieve.
If we hold our ears
to them,
lay hands,
we can hear the whole ocean,
feel what made way.
We wish us
Hallelujah
each time we walk
through a door.
We wish us
a soft touch
a gentle goodbye
when it’s time.