Ada Limón

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Ada Limón is the author of five poetry collections, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Her fourth book Bright Dead Things was named a finalist for the National Book Award, a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for Poetry,  she serves on the faculty of Queens University of Charlotte Low Residency M.F.A program and lives in Lexington, Kentucky. Source

A Good Story

Some days—dishes piled in the sink, books littering the coffee table—

are harder than others. Today, my head is packed with cockroaches, 

 

dizziness and everywhere it hurts. Venom in the jaw, behind the eyes,

between the blades. Still, the dog is snoring on my right, the cat, on my left. 

 

Outside, all those redbuds are just getting good. I tell a friend, The body

is so body. And she nods. I used to like the darkest stories, the bleak 

 

snippets someone would toss out about just how bad it could get.

My stepfather told me a story about when he lived on the streets as a kid, 

 

how he’d, some nights, sleep under the grill at a fast food restaurant until

both he and his buddy got fired. I used to like that story for some reason, 

 

something in me that believed in overcoming. But right now all I want

is a story about human kindness, the way once when I couldn’t stop 

 

crying because I was fifteen and heartbroken, he came in and made

me eat a small pizza he’d cut up into tiny bites until the tears stopped. 


Maybe I was just hungry, I said. And he nodded, holding out the last piece.

Published:

2022

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2025

Themes:

Body & Body Image

Childhood & Coming of Age

Family

Food

Friendship

Love & Relationships

Mental Health

Strength & Resilience

Literary Devices:

Couplets

two lines of verse, usually in the same meter and joined by rhyme, that form a unit

Dialogue

conversation between two or more people as a feature of a book, play, or movie

Imagery

visually descriptive or figurative language, especially in a literary work

Symbolism

a word, object, action, character, or concept that embodies and evokes a range of additional meaning and significance.

Varied syntax

diverse sentence structure