1541: Poem to Watch over You by Omotara James

Today’s poem is What The Suitcase Bearing my Family Name Might Have Contained When it Arrived at Auschwitz by Ava Nathaniel Winter. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… "It is a privilege to have lived in the same part of the same country, safely, for generations. It is a privilege to have a basement, an attic, or a garage filled with boxes: books, family photos, children’s artwork from years of school. They are just things, yes. And they are not just things at all. I try to remember this privilege when complaining about clutter."This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation and get access to the sponsor-free version of The Slowdown today. slowdownshow.org/donate

Today’s poem is What We Wanted by Carol Moldaw. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… "Maybe humans have muscle and sense memory not unlike my dog on her walk around the block. We instinctively know the way, and we are most comfortable traveling the paths we’ve traveled before. It becomes a part of who we are, of how we know ourselves. But sometimes we want or need to travel “off the beaten path,” as they say. Sometimes, as we see in today’s poem, we have to find — or create — a new way."This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation and get access to the sponsor-free version of The Slowdown today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

Today’s poem is Poem to Watch over You by Omotara James. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Diannely Antigua writes… “On Juneteenth, freedom feels like a welcome long denied. It is also a welcome we must keep making possible for each other every day. Not only in law, but in practice. Freedom should be both a declaration and a way of living. Today’s poem imagines that kind of welcome. It speaks to that miracle of arrival, to a life entering the world without needing justification. It reminds us that before the world teaches us otherwise, there is the simple and sacred fact of being received.”This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation and get access to the sponsor-free version of The Slowdown today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

Today’s poem is Boombox Ode: Enjoy the Silence by K. Iver. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Diannely Antigua writes… “There was a time when love, or the possibility of it, came to you as a mixtape or burned CD. The songs were carefully chosen and painstakingly ordered. It wasn’t limitless, like today’s playlists. You had maybe seventy or eighty minutes, which meant every song had to mean something. And when you got one, you’d sit there rewinding and replaying, trying to decode the hidden message the music played back.” This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation and get access to the sponsor-free version of The Slowdown today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

Today’s poem is Pluto by Maggie Dietz. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Diannely Antigua writes… “When I was younger, I learned the order of the planets through a sentence I’ll never forget: “My very educated mother just served us nine pizzas.” This mnemonic device was playful and ridiculous, but I can see now how it was a way of holding something vast inside something small. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Back then, Pluto was still a planet. But that changed in 2006 when scientists said Pluto didn’t meet the definition of a planet anymore. Its gravitational pull wasn’t dominant enough, so it was reclassified and renamed a dwarf planet. Pluto didn’t disappear, though. Out there in the astronomical unknown, it kept its shape. It kept orbiting the sun. Even its five moons remained, just as always. The only thing that changed was what we decided to call it.” This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation and get access to the sponsor-free version of The Slowdown today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

Today’s poem is Maps by Yesenia Montilla. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Diannely Antigua writes… “Today’s poem questions what it means to erase borders and barriers. It imagines a world in which belonging is not something granted or denied, but something we share. It asks what it might mean to move through the world without the illusion of ownership, to see one another beyond names and borders.”This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation and get access to the sponsor-free version of The Slowdown today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

Today’s poem is Against Melancholy by Nathan McClain. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Diannely Antigua writes… “I often hear the phrase “the risk of joy,” and I keep returning to it. Is joy a risk? And if it is, what is it that we are risking? Can I open my chest to joy, knowing it might hurt me if it leaves?” This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation and get access to the sponsor-free version of The Slowdown today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

Today’s poem is i love you to the moon & by Chen Chen. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Diannely Antigua writes… “The moon is about 238,855 (two hundred thirty-eight thousand, eight hundred fifty-five) miles away from Earth, which is roughly 30 Earths lined up end to end. But moonlight only takes about 1.3 seconds to reach us.The distance feels impossible, and yet the light arrives almost instantly. It makes me think about how love can work like that, too. How it can stretch across time and space and still arrive right when we need it.” This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation and get access to the sponsor-free version of The Slowdown today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

Today’s poem is Goldfish by Francisco Márquez. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Diannely Antigua writes… “When it comes to death, we often have a need to witness. It is our human instinct to see and touch, to hear their silence. I remember wondering why it was called a wake service and learning that it comes from staying awake, from keeping vigil over the body before burial. We’re keeping the dead company as they transition, much like we would with a friend at a train station before they move across the country.” This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation and get access to the sponsor-free version of The Slowdown today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

Today’s poem is There Is Always Space in My Life for More Life by Natasha Rao. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Diannely Antigua writes… “I firmly believe I became a poet because of my time in Spain. Something in me cracked open, and a little light came through. I came through. I learned that if I stepped outside the small world I’d been given, the loveliest things could happen. Today’s poem reminds me of the power of stepping into experience and coming away changed. It asks us to make room for the moments we didn’t know we needed.” This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation and get access to the sponsor-free version of The Slowdown today. Slowdownshow.org/donate