Tom Daley’s poetry is deeply emotional, reflective, and rooted in personal history. His work often explores themes of family, memory, loss, and identity, revealing the tender yet complex relationships that shape human experience. In his collection House You Cannot Reach—Poems in the Voice of My Mother and Other Poems, Daley gives voice to his mother, blending empathy and imagination to reconstruct the emotional landscapes of the past. His language is lyrical yet precise, capturing moments of vulnerability and resilience with quiet intensity. Daley’s poems frequently balance personal revelation with universal resonance, transforming intimate memories into broader meditations on love, mortality, and belonging. In Far Cry, his recent chapbook, he continues this introspective journey with even greater refinement and emotional clarity. Overall, Daley’s poetry stands out for its honesty, craftsmanship, and the compassionate vision that illuminates the human condition.
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| Tom Daley |
After a Stroke, My Mother Examines a Picture of the Icon of Our Lady of Guadelupe
Lady, why is your countenance
the color of vole feet
draggling from the jaws of a cat?
What tribe of mud daubers
stung stars onto your mantle?
Who names the fumbles
that topple from your breasts?
Your counterspell blunts
the jagged crescent
of every campesino’s
charmed and smoldering scythe.
Your spooled mouth waits to unfurl
the ticker tape of your vow.
In torchlight, your eyebrows
fly to heaven on thin wings of soot.
Only the moon survives
the crush of your heel.
Virgin of Guadelupe, I pray for your handshake,
I pray for your ribs, I pray for your hips,
the ones tugged dry
while expelling that bountiful head
ordained to gnaw
all the hangnails of history.
Steer me, Lady, through the lightning
that browns the mountains.
Drown the infections
that flush my cough into a gargle.
Virgin, who never burned a supper,
strip me of strangles, grizzles,
knots, of scratched jazz
skipping the shadows
out of my sleep.
Princess of the Aztecs,
thread my poncho with roses this winter
that I might adorn that tomb slab
where even cayenne would cool,
where your son’s brain was looted
of its chemical salves,
and where his feet, which stretched the sea
smooth as a conga head,
refused to rest
at right angles to the ground.
Kiss me, mother of Mexico’s hope—
your little mouth
is still rusty with smoke.
I Send You Off with the Words of a Pop Song Looping in My Ears
Bursting behind us now,
the Atlantic in late May.
You’re piggy on my back then,
both of us jubilant horseshoes
brawling backwards into the foam.
We crossed the Chesapeake
to get here, spinning the long span
of the bridge at breakneck,
the words of the Starbuck
song, “Moonlight Feels Right”
spangling our ear lobes.
Your smiles demure and murderously
limned with the caution
we are tossing to the wind.
All quirk and plenteous play
and never a dull boy.
Never a moment not spent
in the delirium of your trembling
wish to resound with the spritzing bliss
of a wave and a cock and a fist.
Always and every afternoon to fish
and simmer in your barefoot glow.
Never a time like this to know
that the future will find us
but never let us go.
from Far Cry
Bio: Tom Daley’s poetry has appeared in North American Review, Harvard Review, Massachusetts Review, 32 Poems, Cimarron, Fence, Denver Quarterly, Crazyhorse, Barrow Street, Prairie Schooner, Witness, Poetry Ireland Review, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of the Dana Award in Poetry. FutureCycle Press published his first-full length collection of poetry, House You Cannot Reach—Poems in the Voice of My Mother and Other Poems, in the summer of 2015 and his chapbook, Far Cry, was published by Ethel in 2022. He leads writing workshops in the Boston area and online for poets and for writers working in creative prose.
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