I love Nye’s poetry because of the rich way it brings a new perspective to everyday things and the little things in life, while not shying away from the world’s big horrors. Her first poem here is a great example of questioning the smallest things (and making them beautiful through that new way of seeing), while the ones that follow are also intensely meaningful.
One Boy Told Me
Music lives inside my legs.
It’s coming out when I talk.
I’m going to send my valentines
to people you don’t even know.
Oatmeal cookies make my throat gallop.
Grown-ups keep their feet on the ground
when they swing. I hate that.
Look at those 2 o’s with a smash in the middle—
that spells good-bye.
Don’t ever say “purpose” again,
let’s throw the word out.
Don’t talk big to me.
I’m carrying my box of faces.
If I want to change faces I will.
Yesterday faded
but tomorrow’s in boldface.
When I grow up my old names
will live in the house
where we live now.
I’ll come and visit them.
Only one of my eyes is tired.
The other eye and my body aren’t.
Is it true all metal was liquid first?
Does that mean if we bought our car earlier
they could have served it
in a cup?
There’s a stopper in my arm
that’s not going to let me grow any bigger.
I’ll be like this always, small.
And I will be deep water too.
Wait. Just wait. How deep is the river?
Would it cover the tallest man with his hands in the air?
Your head is a souvenir.
When you were in New York I could see you
in real life walking in my mind.
I’ll invite a bee to live in your shoe.
What if you found your shoe
full of honey?
What if the clock said 6:92
instead of 6:30? Would you be scared?
My tongue is the car wash
for the spoon.
Can noodles swim?
My toes are dictionaries.
Do you need any words?
From now on I’ll only drink white milk
on January 26.
What does minus mean?
I never want to minus you.
Just think—no one has ever seen
inside this peanut before!
It is hard being a person.
I do and don’t love you—
isn’t that happiness?
Naomi Shihab Nye, “One Boy Told Me” from Fuel. Copyright © 1998 by Naomi Shihab Nye.
Making A Fist
For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.
‘How do you know if you are going to die?’
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
‘When you can no longer make a fist.’
Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.
Streets
A man leaves the world
and the streets he lived on
grow a little shorter.
One more window dark
in this city, the figs on his branches
will soften for birds.
If we stand quietly enough evenings
there grows a whole company of us
standing quietly together.
overhead loud grackles are claiming their trees
and the sky which sews and sews, tirelessly sewing,
drops her purple hem.
Each thing in its time, in its place,
it would be nice to think the same about people.
Some people do. They sleep completely,
waking refreshed. Others live in two worlds,
the lost and remembered.
They sleep twice, once for the one who is gone,
once for themselves. They dream thickly,
dream double, they wake from a dream
into another one, they walk the short streets
calling out names, and then they answer.
resistance words 