Alison Luterman

Poetry By Sparrow And Alison Luterman

When I worked as a manuscript reader for The Sun, I didn’t always agree with founder and editor Sy Safransky about poetry. . . . But there were two poets whose work always appealed to both of us: the Bay Area poet and essayist Alison Luterman and New York City’s kindest oddball, Sparrow. . . . It’s my honor to introduce both poets, whose rewarding, divergent work has been crucial in shaping the voice and image of The Sun for decades.

— Ann Humphreys

Jump

Because my car is twenty years old / and the gizmo that goes ding ding ding / when you leave the lights on / has been busted for at least a decade, / I’m always contending with a comatose battery.

Hard Times

After that incident I sorted people into two categories: those who could sing and those who couldn’t. I was now relegated to the land of Couldn’t, an exile from the country of music.

A Few Days After My First Vaccine

Walking by the lake, I lose an earring / and don’t even notice it at first, / overwhelmed as I am / by the strangeness of everything.

Access Road

I don’t know if other people feel like there’s a life / running alongside their so-called real life like an / access road runs alongside the main highway.

Being Wrong

One of the great / unheralded joys of late / middle age is the mind-popping / sensation / of how many things / I’ve been wrong about, / starting with sex, / my parents, / and the meaning of the word / bruschetta

Fire All Around

Even though we all breathed the smoke from the destruction of the town of Paradise in 2018 — breathed in their burning cars, homes, animals, and bodies — it was still happening “over there” to “other people.”

The Debate

I’m listening to my father and his brother, / both in their eighties, debate their childhood / from adjoining La-Z-Boy recliners. / “We had no toys,” my father insists. / “What are you talking about, no toys?” / My uncle practically leaps from his chair

Braiding His Hair

Here we are each morning: / my husband on our old kitchen chair, its upholstery / while I comb out his long / wheat-colored hair.

Already True

A Selection Of Poetry For These Times

Staccato

I’m trying to work at this coffee shop / while a young woman with blue hair / and chiseled biceps, two tables away, / holds forth about how no one / should ever take medication / for anxiety and depression

Canoe

When I was young, years ago, canoeing on the green / Green River, with my young first husband, / I wriggled out of my shorts, eased over the lip / of our little boat, and became eel-woman, / naked and glistening, borne along in the current.