My name is Podrigotuma and the longer that I've written poetry and read poetry, I realize

that poetry is asking me to be brave to go into the moments of my own failure and to narrate

those, not as projects of self-hatred, but as projects of observation in the possibility

that I might be able to offer some kind of compassion in the space of a poem to the

self that's writing as well as from that begin to offer compassion in the wider world.

Phase 1 by Dilruba Ahmed

For leaving the fridge open last night, I forgive you. For conjuring white curtains instead of

living your life, for the seedlings that wilt now in tiny pots I forgive you, for saying no

first put yes as an afterthought. I forgive you for hideous visions after childbirth,

brought on by loss of sleep, and when the baby woke repeatedly for your silent rebuke in the dark,

what's your beef? I forgive you for letting vines overtake the garden, for fearing your own

propensity to love, for losing again your bag en route from San Francisco. For the equally

heedless drive back on the caffeine fuel return, I forgive you for leaving windows open and

rain and soaking library books again, for putting forth only revisions of yourself with punctuation

worked over instead of the disordered truth I forgive you. For singing mostly when the shower

drowns your voice, for so admiring the drummer you failed to hear the drum, in forgotten tin cans

may forgiveness gather, pooling in gotters, gushing from pipes a great steady rain of olives from

branches relieved of cruelty and petty meanness with it a flurry of wings, thirteen gray pigeons,

ointment reserved for healers and prophets, I forgive you, I forgive you.

For feeling awkward and nervous without reason, for bearing Keats's empty vessel with such calm,

you worried you had perhaps no moral center at all, for treating your mother with contempt when she

deserved compassion, I forgive you, I forgive you, I forgive you, for growing a capacity for love

...