When thinking feels impossible
...let the body take over
On days when thinking feels impossible, I hold the soft meat of my ribs while it twitches and quivers in that certain uncertainty. On days when thinking feels impossible, I feel my belly shake like a newborn leaf just emerging from a soft, waxy cuticle— unsure if the singing wind is dance partner or breathy grim reaper. On days when thinking feels impossible, I lay my thoughts down and let them rattle— my bones that is. When the thoughts are gone, my limbs shake and quake free from worry, my bones become wind chimes. On days when thinking feels impossible, my singing body thanks some silent god that it is finally free to feel again. _written December 23, 2026
My deep gratitude to Paige Ryan for the prompt that inspired this poem. In her poem Mouth-Noise, she used the line “when thinking feels impossible…” and invited readers to use it as a prompt for their own poetry. Her response to an early draft of this poem also inspired the line “my bones become wind chimes”. I remain immensely grateful for the ways that poets like Paige foster creativity on this platform.
I’m cheating a bit in posting this poem as I had included it in the Open Mic Anthology a couple weeks back, but it has been a busy week and I forgot that I had already posted it until I was about to hit post and I did actually make some significant edits from what I had posted before. Please accept this halfway new poem. Keep reading below for an actually new poem…
Yesterday I had my new poem If We All Have to Fall published on Kassi Wilson’s Poems and Paraboles publication. This poem is a playful meditation on death and failure. Playful is a strange adjective to use here, but read it and tell me what you think. Kassi is doing some great work in helping smaller poets get their work in front of a larger audience. Thanks, Kassi!
Live Poetry Reading
Mark your calendars to attend Opol’s first live reading on February 15th from 9:00am -10:30am PST. (sign up here)
I’m honoured to be co-hosting Opol’s first reading and am thrilled to help create a space for poets and poetry lovers from around the globe to gather and find connection through creativity and the written word. I have had quite a few poems published in Opol over the last 6 months and I have been so inspired by the amazing community that Venessa Tai Yeh is creating there. It is a quiet, online space for poetry, free from the distraction and competitiveness of metrics and marketing. Its beauty is in the simplicity of only putting carefully curated poetry on the page. In addition, to creating a thoughtful environment for reading poetry, Opol honours poets by actually paying them for their work! While the publication is all online, Venessa has just published the first quarterly magazine, with both online and print versions available.
If you can’t make it to the reading, do still check out the quarterly magazine or the regular monthly posts.
Finally, may we all find ways to stay alive to this moment, allowing our bones to shake and wake up our hearts when we start to go numb from fear, disbelief, or indifference.
What a meditative poem Andy! I feel these closing lines:
On days when thinking
feels impossible,
my singing body thanks
some silent god
that it is finally free
to feel again.
This lovely poem unexpectedly lulled and soothed. Thank you.