By Sarah Henry
July 14, 2022
It’s New Year’s Eve and I have begun the frenzied raking of trying to gather myself into a person that I want to take into the new year. I’ve already made my promises. Some of them are old regulars, things I forget halfway through each January: stop wasting money on take-out, go for a walk every morning, write every evening. Some of them are new: spend more time alone, give up drinking alcohol, have a solo bedroom dance party once a week. I expect to break them again and again and again because new years are for old lessons, for all the things that don't get left behind when the clock strikes midnight. But for the sake of ritual, I’ll say this: this year I want to want things unashamedly, to shout from metaphorical rooftops that I want good friendships and a strong community and maybe a kayak.
I Am Running Into a New Year
By Lucille Clifton
i am running into a new year
and the old years blow back
like a wind
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what i said to myself
about myself
when I was sixteen and
twentysix and thirtysix
even thritysix but
i am running into a new year
and I beg what i love and
i leave to forgive me
I am so tired of my passive indecisiveness, of falling into other people’s choices because I am afraid to make my own. I have decided (*note: a decision) that intention is the cure for passivity and this year I intend to build myself a garden where every one of my wants will grow nourished and sun-baked. Basil for the literary magazine I want to start (and for pesto pasta), arugula for learning to play the guitar, strawberries for friendship, catnip just because. I will dig my hands into the dirt and feel how each one of the roots and stretches down into the Earth. This is part of my becoming, turning towards the sky for light and for love.
New Year
by Kate Baer
Look at it, cold and wet like a newborn
Calf. I want to tell it everything–how we
Struggled, how we tore out our hair and
Thumbed through rusted nails just to
Stand for its birth. I want to say: look how
Far we’ve come. Promise our resolutions.
But what does a baby care for oaths and
Pledges. It only wants to live.
I have never had a five-year plan, especially not now when the world is spinning off its axis every other day. I don’t even have a one year plan, I don’t know if I will graduate on time or if I’ll be living in this house in August, but I hope that at the end of this coming year and every following one, I can look at my garden and know that I chose my life.
Prayer for a New Year
By Rhiannon McGavin
For the new year, I won’t count it down like a
Uranium bomb. The last days
Come as a plague ship over the horizon. I
Know so I’m swimming to meet it. Let the
Desert bloom through ruins we can look out of, let us
Outlive the wolves. Fresh air is the only kiss
I need and I will carry you like honey and
Apples. Bless the body between
Love and fear, bless who
Dares the skyline, and who holds
Thieves accountable from the lamp posts
As fireworks blaze into the red dandelions,
And what’s the future except an
Unfolded tablecloth?
Midnight led by shifting light
Of wounds across white rose
Petals? I
I will
I will see the moon and morning and hope.
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