Rachel

@tunesandtales

Midwesterner in the Mid-Atlantic. Making it up as I go. Toastie. She/her.

368 Folgt314 Follower3.643 Posts

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Rachel@tunesandtales· Jul 4

Mid-year reading check in. As usual, asterisk denotes a reread.

The Kingdoms - Natasha Pulley
I'll Have What He's Having - Adib Khorram
World of Wonders - Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Standstill - Sashi Perera (audio)
Clockwork Boys - T. Kingfisher
The Wonder Engine - T. Kingfisher
*In the Hand of the Goddess - Tamora Pierce
The Lion Women of Tehran - Marjan Kamali (audio)
Swordheart - T. Kingfisher
After Hours at Dooryard Books - Cat Sebastian
The Mars House - Natasha Pulley (audio)
The Carrying - Ada Limón
*Things You May Find Hidden In My Ear - Mosab Abu Toha
*A Prayer for the Crown Shy - Becky Chambers
It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over - Anne De Marcken
*The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet - Becky Chambers

Rachel@tunesandtales· Jul 3

FML, it's not quite 10:00 am.

Weather app screenshot showing that it's sunny and 93°, with a heat index of 103°. 9% chance of precipitation, 6 mph wind, temperature predicted to be nearly the same as yesterday.

Rachel@tunesandtales· Jun 28

Some flowers for your troubles:

Two pink lilies and two white lilies amongst greenery

Pretty variegated purple and white flowers up a green, large leafed stalk against an orangey brown wooden fence

Orange daisy ish looking flowers amongst greenery against an orangey brown wooden fence

Rachel@tunesandtales· Jun 22

Great night for soccer! 🙃

Screenshot of weather app alerts: Three flash flood warnings, a severe thunderstorm watch, and a flood watch

Rachel@tunesandtales· Jun 19

Some graffiti for your Friday:

Black sharpie graffiti on the back of a street/parking sign. It reads "Still capable of love after generations of this mess" with some shading and decorative squiggles around the words.

A sticker with picture of a neon green skeleton lying in a black coffin with a hot pink lining. The skeleton is holding and looking down at a smartphone.

Rachel@tunesandtales· May 29

Some flowers from CA for you. First two from a park near my friends' house, others from SF Botanical Gardens.

Pinkish purple bell-like flowers on a stem with blue sky, green and brown grass and tree, and houses in the background.

Small purple flowers with yellow centers amongst greenery

Red flowers with yellowy orange centers on a green, leafy tree branch

Rachel@tunesandtales· Apr 30

National Poetry Month 2026 Day 30 - A Song on the End of the World by Czeslaw Milosz www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49451/...

A Song on the End of the World
By Czeslaw Milosz

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
There will be no other end of the world,
There will be no other end of the world.

Warsaw, 1944

Rachel@tunesandtales· Apr 30

National Poetry Month 2026 Day 29 - Generations in Transit by Tiffany Aurelia readalittlepoetry.com/2025/12/08/g...

Generations in Transit
Tiffany Aurelia

I’ve brought some sweaters. A toothbrush. Everything
else is borrowed or where I left it, unearthed
from months of limbo. Here, the days are slow. The moon
is forgiving. I walk past paddy fields where
blooming rice hugs my bare feet, learn to unwrap
sticky porridge from coconut leaves. They say
taste buds only live for two weeks, but that was before
I tasted the eternal language of home. Before
I knew love could translate through mangoes picked
straight from the garden tree or motorcycle rides
to wet markets, bodies pressed between
humidity. The village hums of a Javan tongue
I understand but cannot speak. My parents reassemble
dialect into memory as if they never left
twenty years ago, and among the street vendors
I test the words for thank you. Tonight, I will
sleep in my mother’s old bunk bed, the one
that still creaks on the second step. I will wonder
if she once lay the same way—one hand grazing
the notched wood, the other holding
her heart. The future too blurry to see. In
different timelines, we were both
once girls.

Rachel@tunesandtales· Apr 29

National Poetry Month 2026 Day 28 - Tomatoes by Joy Sullivan readalittlepoetry.com/2026/04/22/t...

Tomatoes
Joy Sullivan

I waited so long for love
and suddenly, here it is
standing in the garden, hands full
of heirlooms hot from the sun.

Soon we’ll make a supper of them.
Salted slabs between slices of bread.
Your beard silvers. My hips ripen.
The mail piles up.

Phone calls go unanswered. Forgive us.
Our mouths are full of tomatoes.
We are so busy
being small and hungry and alive.

Rachel@tunesandtales· Apr 27

National Poetry Month 2026 Day 27 - Cityscape by Eavan Boland www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...

Cityscape
By Eavan Boland

I have a word for it —
the way the surface waited all day
to be a silvery pause between sky and city —
which is elver.

And another one for how
the bay shelved cirrus clouds
piled up at the edge of the Irish Sea,
which is elver too.

The old Blackrock baths
have been neglected now for fifty years,
fine cracks in the tiles
visible as they never were when

I can I can I can
shouted Harry Vernon as
he dived from the highest board
curving down into salt and urine

his cry fading out
through the half century it took
to hear as a child that a glass eel
had been seen

entering the seawater baths at twilight —
also known as elver —
and immediately
the word begins

a delicate migration —
a fine crazing healing in the tiles —
the sky deepening above a city
that has always been

unsettled between sluice gates and the Irish Sea
to which there now comes at dusk
a translucent visitor
yearning for the estuary.

Rachel@tunesandtales· Apr 26

National Poetry Month 2026 Day 26 - A Daughter Named After Nina by Elizabeth Acevedo www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...

A Daughter Named After Nina
By Elizabeth Acevedo

voice of incoming 2 express train

pray herself altar

contort mouth shotgun:

sawed off a saw

soften tongue songbird

hands mosaicked mirrors

donning skin like battle gear

dawning skin like evening gown

this name pinned on her shoulders;

a heavy mantle. an incantation.

Rachel@tunesandtales· Apr 25

National Poetry Month 2026 Day 25 - A Memory of Us by Safia Elhillo www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/159491...

A Memory of Us
By Safia Elhillo

when i think of us i think of the lakewater
near longtown, what might not technically
constitute a lake but i prefer that word for
the open mouth of its vowel, how it called
us to its throat & held us there, in the sun,
the high points of our faces slick with light
& its arc around our shoulders, the soft
gathering of flesh around our knees,
the lone chair we found near the shore
where we took turns posing, jutting out
an eloquent hip, cackling in the bright language
of flowers for whom i downloaded an app
& learned their names: beautyberry, yarrow,
cornus florida, black-eyed susan, & you,
& you, my bright hibiscus, my every color

Rachel@tunesandtales· Apr 24

National Poetry Month 2026 Day 24 - The Problem with Early Warnings by Charles Rafferty www.slowdownshow.org/episode/2026...

The Problem with Early Warnings
by Charles Rafferty

People don’t like to leave a party
unless the house is actually
on fire. Even then, if the flames
are far enough away
to be pretty, they’ll finish
their drink, take one more pass
at the hors d’oeuvres.
How things happen has always been
unclear. Hurricanes begin
in a place where no one lives.
Agents of the government start
to wear masks. Fascism is
a word my neighbors won’t use
yet. They are following
the law, they say, and the sirens
are coming for someone else.

Rachel@tunesandtales· Apr 23

National Poetry Month 2026 Day 23 - The Storm by Mary Oliver www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...

Mary Oliver

The Storm

Now through the white orchard my little dog
romps, breaking the new snow
with wild feet.
Running here running there, excited,
hardly able to stop, he leaps, he spins
until the white snow is written upon
in large, exuberant letters,
a long sentence, expressing
the pleasures of the body in this world.

Oh, I could not have said it better
myself.

Rachel@tunesandtales· Apr 22

National Poetry Month 2026 Day 22 - Let Every Leaf by Mattie Quesenberry Smith poets.org/poem/let-eve...

Let Every Leaf

Mattie Quesenberry Smith

Let every leaf caught in currents
Speak simultaneous accords
Iterated by the wind.

Unafraid, let them speak
Revelations to the universe.
After all, we expect revelations

Inside this hothouse Earth.
Instead, we have the trees,
Those crowned interpreters

That heft branching limbs,
Splayed from root-tip to leaf-lip.
It is on their lips—listen.

Their tongues pierce infinity’s
Faces. They speak into places
Tight enough to trap the sun.

Though they endure the shadows
Hemming the hollows from the ridges,
They know it is best to kiss

No shadow. They interpret
The gaining winds
Throughout dusk’s catastrophes:

It is best to fear no shadow.
Their stirring tongues translate light into life.
It is on their whispered lips. Let them interpret.

Rachel@tunesandtales· Apr 21

National Poetry Month 2026 Day 21 - My First Memory (of Librarians) by Nikki Giovanni poets.org/poem/my-firs...

My First Memory (of Librarians)

Nikki Giovanni
1943 –2024

This is my first memory:
A big room with heavy wooden tables that sat on a creaky
wood floor
A line of green shades—bankers’ lights—down the center
Heavy oak chairs that were too low or maybe I was simply
too short
For me to sit in and read
So my first book was always big

In the foyer up four steps a semi-circle desk presided
To the left side the card catalogue
On the right newspapers draped over what looked like
a quilt rack
Magazines face out from the wall

The welcoming smile of my librarian
The anticipation in my heart
All those books—another world—just waiting
At my fingertips.

Rachel@tunesandtales· Apr 20

National Poetry Month 2026 Day 20 - This human life by Maggie Smith poets.org/poem/human-l...

This human life

Maggie Smith

must look so small, undetectable even,
from the vantage point where I imagine

a god could see me, and I do sometimes
imagine a god like a sentient star

out beyond where our instruments
could find it, then I talk myself

out of the image. Out of the concept
entirely. From a distance, I know

I’m an ant tunneling my way
through sand between plastic panels,

watched—or not—from outside.
My puny movements on this planet,

all the things I’ve done or built
with my own body or mind, seem

like nothing at all. But from the inside
this life feels enormous, unlimited

by the self—by selfness—
vaster even than the sparkling

dark it can’t be seen from.

Rachel@tunesandtales· Apr 19

National Poetry Month 2026 Day 19 - Green Shirt by Naomi Shihab Nye poets.org/poem/green-s...

Green Shirt

Naomi Shihab Nye
1952 –

His mother did not wash it for this,

for him to be carried dead by two friends

across the thirsty ground of Gaza.

That morning he put it on, she told him

he looked handsome, a fine deep color

for an unfolding day.

Rachel@tunesandtales· Apr 18

National Poetry Month 2026 Day 18 - Throwing Children by Ross Gay poets.org/poem/throwin...

Throwing Children

Ross Gay

It is really something when a kid who has a hard time becomes a kid who’s having a good time in no small part thanks to you throwing that kid in the air again and again on a mile long walk home from the Indian joint as her mom looks sideways at you like you don’t need to keep doing this because you’re pouring with sweat and breathing a little bit now you’re getting a good workout but because the kid laughs like a horse up there laughs like a kangaroo beating her wings against the light because she laughs like a happy little kid and when coming down and grabbing your forearm to brace herself for the time when you will drop her which you don’t and slides her hand into yours as she says for the fortieth time the fiftieth time inexhaustible her delight again again again and again and you say give me til the redbud tree or give me til the persimmon tree because she knows the trees and so quiet you almost can’t hear through her giggles she says ok til the next tree when she explodes howling yanking your arm from the socket again again all the wolves and mourning doves flying from her tiny throat and you throw her so high she lives up there in the tree for a minute she notices the ants organizing on the bark and a bumblebee carousing the little unripe persimmon in its beret she laughs and laughs as she hovers up there like a bumblebee like a hummingbird up there giggling in the light like a giddy little girl up there the world knows how to love.

Rachel@tunesandtales· Apr 17

National poetry Month 2026 Day 17 - The Cypress Broke by Mahmoud Darwish, translated by Fady Joudah www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52552/...

The Cypress Broke

By Mahmoud Darwish
Translated By Fady Joudah

The cypress is the tree’s grief and not
the tree, and it has no shadow because it is
the tree’s shadow
—Bassam Hajjar

The cypress broke like a minaret, and slept on
the road upon its chapped shadow, dark, green,
as it has always been. No one got hurt. The vehicles
sped over its branches. The dust blew
into the windshields ... / The cypress broke, but
the pigeon in a neighboring house didn’t change
its public nest. And two migrant birds hovered above
the hem of the place, and exchanged some symbols.
And a woman said to her neighbor: Say, did you see a storm?
She said: No, and no bulldozer either ... / And the cypress
broke. And those passing by the wreckage said:
Maybe it got bored with being neglected, or it grew old
with the days, it is long like a giraffe, and little
in meaning like a dust broom, and couldn’t shade two lovers.
And a boy said: I used to draw it perfectly,
its figure was easy to draw. And a girl said: The sky today
is incomplete because the cypress broke.
And a young man said: But the sky today is complete
because the cypress broke. And I said
to myself: Neither mystery nor clarity,
the cypress broke, and that is all
there is to it: the cypress broke!

Rachel@tunesandtales· Apr 16

National Poetry Month 2026 Day 16 - Nothing Major to Report by Leila Chatti www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...

Nothing Major to Report
By Leila Chatti

Only temporary peril—another Thursday.
Blood remains primarily
inside my body. The scream of
the animal is for attention.
Abruptly my shadow reminds
me I am human, in the room,
though the darkness I make
on the walls could be mistaken for storm.
The coulisses of trees endure,
despite my failures to see them
as more than symbol.
The gray seems personal.
The news, sempiternal.
I am of and in an uncertain age.
A coolness descends. The future.

Rachel@tunesandtales· Apr 15

National Poetry Month 2026 Day 15 - When I Heard at the Close of Day by Walt Whitman poets.org/poem/when-i-...

When I Heard at the Close of Day

Walt Whitman
1819 –1892

When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been receiv’d with plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy night for me that follow’d,
And else when I carous’d, or when my plans were accomplish’d, still I was not happy,
But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health, refresh’d, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn,
When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear in the morning light,
When I wander’d alone over the beach, and undressing bathed, laughing with the cool waters, and saw the sun rise,
And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way coming, O then I was happy,
O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food nourish’d me more, and the beautiful day pass’d well,
And the next came with equal joy, and with the next at evening came my friend,
And that night, while all was still I heard the waters roll slowly continually up the shores,
I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands as directed to me whispering to congratulate me,
For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool night,
In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined toward me,
And his arm lay lightly around my breast—and that night I was happy.

Rachel@tunesandtales· Apr 14

National Poetry Month 2026 Day 14 - The Singers Change, the Music Goes On by Linda Gregg www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...

The Singers Change, the Music Goes On
By Linda Gregg

No one really dies in the myths.
No world is lost in the stories.
Everything is lost in the retelling,
in being wondered at. We grow up
and grow old in our land of grass
and blood moons, births and goneness.
We live our myth in the recurrence,
pretending we will return another day.
Like the morning coming every morning.
The truth is we come back as a choir.
Otherwise Eurydice would be forever
in the dark. Our singing brings her
back. Our dying keeps her alive.

Rachel@tunesandtales· Apr 13

National Poetry Month 2026 Day 13 - They/Them by Danez Smith www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...

They/Them
By Danez Smith

said short: i feel more like a stud. said
with some nuance: as if i came to
masculinity through the women’s gate,
as if a daughter who grew into her father
but not like trans, but like trans or
a transformation without catalyst
or smoke. or more like born
in the right body too early or born
at the wrong time, in the wrong language.
i remember Tommy said he (is he a they now?)
lived for how i put it in that one poem “more
tomboy than boy” and i think that’s what
language does—builds a room made for living.
and who have i followed further into myself?
Cam, Paula, Tommy, Fati, Andrea, Auntie George
or anyone who saved me from a body of silence
by just living their lives in the sun? and if
the soul is a table on which the body sits
crowded with the meat and the marrow
and the red, red wine, around me sit
too many ghosts to ever rest in isolation.
of course you should address me in the plural.
said short: i am everyone. i am everything.
said shorter: i am.

Rachel@tunesandtales· Apr 13

National Poetry Month 2026 Day 12 - Peonies by Danusha Laméris poets.org/index%2Ephp/...

Peonies

Danusha Laméris

What are these strangers
sitting on the table in their ruffled
collars. They open, close, open,
emit the scent of cracked pepper
and honey. Magenta punctuation marks
at which to pause. Pink commas
against the green scrub.
I would trade ten goats for one whiff
of peonies opening in a vase.
An ancient proverb says
you should not let a woodpecker
see you plucking a peony
lest it peck out your eyes.
We are afraid of happiness.
Peonies are to loneliness
what wind is to the trees.
Are they animal? Mineral?
Vegetable? They move
as the sun moves. When I
brought them home
they were dark. Now,
a whisper, balletic tulle.
They are not diminished
even as they turn to smoke.

Rachel@tunesandtales· Apr 11

National Poetry Month 2026 Day 11 - Girlfriends by Tove Ditlevsen, translated by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell poets.org/poem/girlfri...

Girlfriends

Tove Ditlevsen
1917 –1976

translated from the Danish by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell

The soft-spoken friendship between women
is made of wistful reminiscing,
is made of crisp, yellow confessions
traced absently in sunlit dust.

It lives near children and must disguise
its distinct nature and scent a little.
Under the table and linen and teacups
it hides a sweetness no one may see.

Close to a kitchen, a striking clock,
and close to the husband’s taut net of veins,
close to the husband himself, his heartbeat,
his deep-rooted expectation day and night –

this friendship, ardent and unspoken,
can only vibrate like a poem
carrying between its lines a want
the poet has never called by name.

Rachel@tunesandtales· Apr 10

National Poetry Month 2026 Day 10 - Grief Lessons by Emily Skaja www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...

Grief Lessons
By Emily Skaja

No one stole your money.
No one stole your whole heart
then climbed into a stolen plane
and stole away into the night
to disappear entirely, stealing
darkness itself, then dawn.
What name would you even call
into the shadows between
here and gone, yours and no one’s,
what color could you give it,
this shade of something
slightly less than life?
Better to leave it whole.
Pure death—like an unmined diamond.
Keep the light of the fire
away from it—clean, untempered
by the tedious heat of language—
safe from your magpie, morbid way
of turning and turning
your pain in your hands
until you’ve crushed it to dust.
And anyway, who are you to say
I lost the world? No one. To admit
that you held the world at all?

Rachel@tunesandtales· Apr 9

National Poetry Month 2026 Day 9 - There Will Be Stars by Sara Teasdale monadnock.net/teasdale/sta...

There Will Be Stars
by Sara Teasdale

There will be stars over the place forever;
Though the house we loved and the street we loved are lost,
Every time the earth circles her orbit
On the night the autumn equinox is crossed,
Two stars we knew, poised on the peak of midnight
Will reach their zenith; stillness will be deep;
There will be stars over the place forever,
There will be stars forever, while we sleep.

Rachel@tunesandtales· Apr 9

National Poetry Month 2026 Day 8 - poem where I be & you just might by Danez Smith www.best-poems.net/danez-smith/...

poem where I be & you just might
by Danez Smith

I am sitting next to you & you are not there
you're a frameless heat, mass of ruptured air.

to be clear, you are the spit & liver it takes
to be human & I want it & I think you want me

to have it all, but I know
what it's like to be one of the few blacks

for miles. I know what our people think
about me, or maybe us. I know

God's flaming eye, I stare into it always
dying to blink, irises cracking like commandment stones.

I get it.
I get it.

&it might be how you say
my name like a testimony

or how I graze your hand
&yours doesn't move, but my body

made up a rumor about your body
&wants to prove it true. forgive him.

Rachel@tunesandtales· Apr 7

National Poetry Month 2026 Day 7 - Once in the 40's by William Stafford poets.org/poem/once-40s