Thin Skin

Thin Skin, poems and photos by Drew Myron

Now Available!
Purchase limited, signed copies at PushPullBooks.com

Paperback, 99 pages
$12

Every book of poems tells a poet’s life story. Thin Skin tells the story of a poet’s troubled life buoyed by her own compassionate acts, a life emboldened by the resiliency her own empathy gives her. Although marked with the indelible blear of many sunless days, Drew Myron’s world makes …"a large leap into a saffron sky." Her lyric poems map the demanding yet potentially rewarding routes people must take—…"the terrain/ of this generous world."

 — Paulann Petersen
Oregon Poet Laureate

All the Dancing Birds

I am honored and thrilled to have my poem featured in the introduction to All the Dancing Birds, a novel by Auburn McCanta. Both touching and informative, this heartbreakingly beautiful story offers insight into  Alzheimer's powerful grip.

Buy the book here.

Read the interview with author Auburn McCanta here.

It took so long

In days of debris
we sifted for angels.

Now we know:
It's futile to search for solid joy.

Happiness is a vapor, powerful
as wind, but just as shifty.

We do not hold
keys or answers

but vision,
memory, hands.

Mine in yours, every
squeeze says loved

says I am I am I am.

- Drew Myron 

Women Artists Datebook

East of Remote

                      Joseph, Oregon

It takes me three days to breathe,
to let my body slump into sleep.
I had forgotten crisp mornings
and places where sun rises
before grey and damp, before
sadness has a chance to settle.

Here, birds knock on trees and poles,
on dreams. I forgot roads flat, true
as a two-by-four, and trucks that rattle
past rodeo grounds, grain elevators
and a sign that says Beer Sold Here.
Everything hangs by hard country luck.

My camera seeks ruin,
finds shambles and sinking,
broken down barns, roofs and doors,
places and people holding on but barely.
Everything, everywhere, falling, patched.

At the bed and breakfast,
the man next door
whistles in the shower.
I had forgotten the sound of ease.

- Drew Myron

This poem appears in the 2013 Women Artists Datebook, a portable print calendar featuring art and poetry by more than 30 women artists. The datebook is published by the Syracuse Cultural Workers, a progressive publisher committed to peace, sustainability, social justice, feminism and multiculturalism, and can be purchased here.

Sweet Grief

Senitila McKinley painting

Grief is beautiful, we agreed, then laughed

Because when grief grips the neck, grabs
the throat, shakes body and sours
the mind

we need humor.

You are one Christmas, two seasons,
20 weeks and 159 days

away.

The sky holds a reluctant sun.
Brightness cowers, head down, drawing
darkness as proof of its

despair.

Without you, meaning dims and this absence
pulls me down and under, away.

I can’t recall the sound of your voice.
Still, I bring flowers and meet the sky,
ask it to

hold me, too.

- Drew Myron

 
From Sweet Grief, a collaboration featuring paintings by Senitila McKinley, paired with poems by Drew Myron.

Sweet Grief: Paintings and Poems on Love & Loss is showing April 20 to May 20, 2012 at the Windermere Gallery in Seal Rock, Oregon.

 

Special edition exhibition book - $10

Hawai'i Pacific Review

Living on the edge of the Pacific Ocean is an extraordinary experience. But I've found it's one thing to visit paradise; it's another to live in it. And a majestic setting, while soothing, does not erase the burdens you bring to it.

I'm heartened the editors at Hawai'i Pacific Review understand this paradox, and I'm honored to have a poem included in the latest issue, Volume 25.

The Ocean Will Not Inspire

It's not enough
to live in beauty

surrounded by
sweet pea clusters
along every edge

It’s not enough
to hike a forest
lit with sun

to know mossy days
textured with season
and cheer

If winter
burrows inside

If you make it a home
in your heart
no ocean can
quench

nothing will
inspire or awe

You will
freeze
numb and blind
to the miles
of wild daisies

outside your door

- Drew Myron