Trojan Poetry 68: Morgan Parker and June Jordan

Poem
by Morgan Parker
October 16, 2012   (Painted Bride Quarterly)

I know it takes seven years for our cells to change
so I started last Thursday the train
was pregnant with stillness and groceries so
do you know what I thought? I wondered
and then I thought I would be sick
with the sound of your feet against hardwood
coming to sweep up twisted spine
with that thing you always say and the way you always
say it you say you’ll get it right next time
thinking it’s my fault so I read some June Jordan
poems caught you hiding in the margins begging
to be swallowed got off two stops early nauseous
later that night I’m so anxious I knit
two rows of a scarf it’s so ugly I fall asleep
 

To Be Continued:
by June Jordan

The partial mastectomy took a long time to execute
And left a huge raggedy scar
Healing from that partial mastectomy took even longer
And devolved into a psychological chasm 2 times the depth
And breadth of the physical scar from the mastectomy that was raggedy
And huge
Metastatic reactivation of the breast cancer requiring partial mastectomy
That left a huge raggedy scar in the first place now pounds
To pieces
A wound head-set fifty times more implacable and more intractable
Than the psychological chasm produced by the healing process
That was twice as enormously damaging as the surgery
Which left a huge raggedy scar

And so I go
on

Trojan Poetry 67: "Addicted to Joy" by James Harms

Addicted to Joy
By James Harms

Whales fall slowly to the ocean floor
after dying and feed the vertical nation
for years. Like Christ, who feeds us still,
they say, though I don’t know.
But imagine it:
fish chasing through bones
or nibbling what’s left, the whale,
when it finally touches bottom,
an empty church.
Forget all that,
it’s intended to soften
the skin, like apricot seeds and mud, or boredom.
The drift of worlds in a given day
can turn a telephone to porcelain,
open graves in the sidewalk. So that
who knows why thinking about thinking
leads to new inventions of grace
that never take, never lead to , say, what to do
with Grandmother, who is determined to live
“beyond her usefulness,” which is fine,
but why won’t she relax and watch the sea with me?
I wish someone would intrude on all this.
People grow tired
explaining themselves to mirrors,
to clerks administering the awful perfume.
I ask a Liberace look-alike,
“Why do you dress that way?”
“What way?” he says,
and he’s right.
Who taught us to bow our heads
while waiting for trains? To touch
lumber without regret and sing privately
or not at all? To invest the season
with forgiveness and coax from it
A hopeful omen? Lord knows
the hope would heal this little fear.
But who taught us to fear?
Soon branches crackle in the windy heat
like something cooking too quickly,
dogwood lathering the empty woods
and everyone looking for a commitment
of permanence, from summer, from someone else.
Two deer the color of corn disappear
into an empty field, and I wait beside the road
for them to move. I want to see them again.

Trojan Poetry 66: "From a Window" by Christian Wiman

From a Window
By Christian Wiman

Incurable and unbelieving
in any truth but the truth of grieving,

I saw a tree inside a tree
rise kaleidoscopically

as if the leaves had livelier ghosts.
I pressed my face as close

to the pane as I could get
to watch that fitful, fluent spirit

that seemed a single being undefined
or countless beings of one mind

haul its strange cohesion
beyond the limits of my vision

over the house heavenwards.
Of course I knew those leaves were birds.

Of course that old tree stood
exactly as it had and would

(but why should it seem fuller now?)
and though a man's mind might endow

even a tree with some excess
of life to which a man seems witness,

that life is not the life of men.
And that is where the joy came in.

Christian Wiman, "From a Window" from Every Riven Thing. Copyright © 2011 by Christian Wiman.

Trojan Poetry 65: "This Morning, I Wanted Four Legs" by Jane Hirshfield

Oh no!  I messed up. The other Jane Hirshfield episode is #37.  #36 is really good too, though!

Video interview of Hirshfield mentioned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4-UKzxrJvQ

This Morning, I Wanted Four Legs
by Jane Hirshfield

Nothing on two legs weighs much,
or can.
An elephant, a donkey, even a cookstove—
those legs, a person could stand on.
Two legs pitch you forward.
Two legs tire.
They look for another two legs to be with,
to move one set forward to music
while letting the other move back.
They want to carve into a tree trunk:
2gether 4ever.
Nothing on two legs can bark,
can whinny or chuff.
Tonight, though, everything’s different.
Tonight I want wheels.


Published in The New Yorker, July 2, 2012

Trojan Poetry 64: "Question" by May Swenson

Question
by May Swenson

Body my house
my horse my hound 
what will I do
when you are fallen

Where will I sleep 
How will I ride 
What will I hunt

Where can I go
without my mount 
all eager and quick 
How will I know 
in thicket ahead
is danger or treasure 
when Body my good 
bright dog is dead

How will it be
to lie in the sky
without roof or door 
and wind for an eye

With cloud for shift 
how will I hide?

Trojan Poetry 63: "The Truth" by Ross Gay

The Truth
by Ross Gay

Because he was 38, because this
was his second job, because
he had two daughters, because his hands
looked like my father's, because at 7
he would walk to the furniture warehouse,
unload trucks 'til 3 AM, because I
was fourteen and training him, because he made
$3.75 an hour, because he had a wife
to look in the face, because
he acted like he respected me,
because he was sick and would not call out
I didn't blink when the water
dropped from his nose
into the onion's perfectly circular
mouth on the Whopper Jr.
I coached him through preparing.
I did not blink.
Tell me this didn't happen.
I dare you.

http://www.rossgay.net/about

https://cavankerrypress.org/tag/ross-gay/

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/92117/the-truth-58764f10d8c0a

Trojan Poetry 62: "Thanks" by Yusef Komunyakaa

Thanks
By Yusef Komunyakaa

Thanks for the tree
between me & a sniper’s bullet.
I don’t know what made the grass
sway seconds before the Viet Cong
raised his soundless rifle.
Some voice always followed,
telling me which foot
to put down first.
Thanks for deflecting the ricochet
against that anarchy of dusk.
I was back in San Francisco
wrapped up in a woman’s wild colors,
causing some dark bird’s love call
to be shattered by daylight
when my hands reached up
& pulled a branch away
from my face. Thanks
for the vague white flower
that pointed to the gleaming metal
reflecting how it is to be broken
like mist over the grass,
as we played some deadly
game for blind gods.
What made me spot the monarch
writhing on a single thread
tied to a farmer’s gate,
holding the day together
like an unfingered guitar string,
is beyond me. Maybe the hills
grew weary & leaned a little in the heat.
Again, thanks for the dud
hand grenade tossed at my feet
outside Chu Lai. I’m still
falling through its silence.
I don’t know why the intrepid
sun touched the bayonet,
but I know that something
stood among those lost trees
& moved only when I moved.