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percystjoan 's review for:
The Hurting Kind
by Ada Limón
read this to celebrate ada limon being named the new poet laureate and WOW am i glad i finally got to it! i really liked bright dead things but this really solidified my love of her work. it checks all of my boxes which are: poems about nature, poems about death, and books organized into sections after the seasons. how could i not love it
thorns
armed with our white plastic buckets
we set off in the safety of the noonday
heat to snag the full rubus blackberries
at the bend of her family's gravel road.
but before we even reached the end
of the driveway, a goose hung strangled
in the fence wire, bloodless and limp. her
long neck twisted, her hard beak open.
she was dead. though we had been loosed
like loyal ranch dogs, we knew we should
go back, tell someone, offer help. still,
sunburned and stubborn in the way only
long free days can make a body, we walked
to the thicket and picked. when we returned,
bloodied by prickles and spattered with stains,
we were scolded, not for secreting
the news of the dead goose, but for picking
too many berries. for picking all day
in the sun without worry for our own scratched
skin. i can still remember how satisfying
it was. how we picked in near silence, two
girls who were never silent. how we knew
to plunder so well, to take and take
with this new muscle, this new gristle
that grew over us for good.
[also: drowning creek, invasive, "i have wanted clarity in light of my lack of light", open water, heat, and the end of poetry. or just read the whole thing, it's worth it]
thorns
armed with our white plastic buckets
we set off in the safety of the noonday
heat to snag the full rubus blackberries
at the bend of her family's gravel road.
but before we even reached the end
of the driveway, a goose hung strangled
in the fence wire, bloodless and limp. her
long neck twisted, her hard beak open.
she was dead. though we had been loosed
like loyal ranch dogs, we knew we should
go back, tell someone, offer help. still,
sunburned and stubborn in the way only
long free days can make a body, we walked
to the thicket and picked. when we returned,
bloodied by prickles and spattered with stains,
we were scolded, not for secreting
the news of the dead goose, but for picking
too many berries. for picking all day
in the sun without worry for our own scratched
skin. i can still remember how satisfying
it was. how we picked in near silence, two
girls who were never silent. how we knew
to plunder so well, to take and take
with this new muscle, this new gristle
that grew over us for good.
[also: drowning creek, invasive, "i have wanted clarity in light of my lack of light", open water, heat, and the end of poetry. or just read the whole thing, it's worth it]