Welcome back for Zoeglossia’s Poem of the Week series curated this month by Raymond Antrobus.
April 5, 2021
Audio
This poem isn't interested in my exhaustion
By Matthew Siegel
View the full text below.
This poem isn't interested in my exhaustion
By Matthew Siegel
only how it can open itself,
carve a valley through my fear.
I want to name each feeling
and let each name go.
There is a place in me
where I have never been sick.
Bravery, let me speak of pain
I thought was done with me
yet still ripples outward
and outward. I had walked away
thinking the stone had reached
the bottom of memory.
Today I will not be brave.
Today I will sit still,
try to consider what it is that is
in me still. I will try to see the sky
as more than sky, more than skin,
more than this exhaustion.
Bearded man in a grey sweatshirt sitting next to a dog. There is a rocky landscape behind him.
Matthew Siegel is the author of Blood Work. His poems and essays have appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, The Guardian, PBS NewsHour, San Francisco Chronicle, and elsewhere. He is Professor of Humanities and Sciences at San Francisco Conservatory of Music and lives in Oakland, California.