Poem inspired by Langston Hughes's "Dream Deferred" from The Panther & The Lash. This is wholesale thievery from the original poem. Same structure (though I added a couplet), same rhyme scheme and similar language. Here's the original. Rainbow Flag, Half Mast
Adam Stone What happens to a massacre replaced by a constantly tragic news cycle? Does it get washed away like blame in a hurricaned city? Or dry up like a well of unsupervised pity? Do its victims finally find peace with their names role called on a press release? Does it get filed as notes for the survivors' therapists when the media changes the word homophobe to terrorist? Maybe it just frays like a rainbow flag made of cotton until it's just another mass shooting forgotten
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This first section of the interaction was inspired by the epigraph from Sharon Olds's "Late Poem To My Father". It's also part of a series of poems inspired by a Nicole Homer prompt. The second portion is just my response to how I read this book at eighteen, and how I read this book at thirty-nine. Ten Meals I Don't Remember Eating #10: February 16th, 2016, Cambridge, Massachusetts When I love you now, I like to think I am giving my love directly to that boy in the fiery room, as if it could reach him in time. --- Sharon Olds, "Late Poem To My Father" You were never as eighteen as you were at thirty sitting on my bed in your room playing Kingdom Hearts pretending you didn't hear me knock on the door We had both ordered dinner at the same time from slightly different restaurants Yours arrived first but I had mistakenly answered the door and paid for your meal I knocked louder Not your cluelessly optimistic ex but a parent trying to respect the privacy of an unnecessarily belligerent teenager I had a speech memorized opening with a joke and ending with you moving out again I didn't speak to you for three weeks in case I accidentally recited it You smiled as you took your food into your room I paid for my dinner too sat on the floor in my room watching the door between us imagining I knew how to open it without disturbing you when i was eighteen and less metaphor i read the gold cell from cover to i can't anymore . laughed at the pope's penis and imagined i truly understood the solution . i loved how sharon olds viewed the world outside her own . but when her family came in . her father . her history . her impending children . i . i read them over and over . knowing that i was missing something . all of my love was current . all of my realizations were in other books . all of my love was things . all of my people were something missing .
when i was thirty-nine and prime time soap opera i read the gold cell from back to front . family to the outside world . how much simpler to start with the closeness i don't understand . end with the world i'm afraid to know You first see The Gold Cell through binoculars and press clippings. On the longest day of the year, a man is talked down from the roof of a building by concerned police officers. A woman confronts her own racism on a New York city subway. Paramedics save an abandoned baby. A man has a conjoined twin. A young girl survives rape but her friend does not. The stories are told as facts. No need for melodrama. The truth of the events is enough blood.
"Outside The Operating Room Of The Sex Change Doctor" is sweet mango candy with a jalapeno center. It begins a trio of poems that I use in workshops and classes. "The Solution" which snakes around Sharon's (I don't know if it's ok to call her Sharon yet. There's still a distance here. Like she is someone you're standing in line at the post office, and you're both afraid it might close before you can send out your really important documents, and she just made a very funny joke, but you don't know if she made the joke for you or if you just happen to be standing near her while she makes the joke to herself.) "The Solution" snakes around Ms. Olds's projection for how to fix "the singles problem". (Is being single a problem? is not the address on the envelope she's affixing stamps to. It's for the people who want. It's for people who want to be wanted. It's for people who want in very specific ways that 1987 didn't know how to handle with their lack of Craigslist and farmer-themed dating websites.) "The Solution" snakes around Ms. Olds's view of American sex, and it plops us at the feet of her next poem "The Pope's Penis" where she grants...ahem...a weight to what's inside the Vatican leader's robes. She closes the first section with open arms, watching imaginary mother and imaginary daughter in bliss. This is the section I use in workshops and classes because sometimes a poet doesn't need to memoir and "I" to make poetry seem personal. Section 2 is her childhood. Her parents. Her how-do-I-forgive-the-loving-monsters-who-raised-me parents. She begins the section with "I Go Back To May, 1937" where she debates keeping her parents from falling in love so that they won't hurt each other. Then Polaroids of what was. Being held over a laundry chute to fix wires. Lies about presents. Driving up steep hills. Her mother's diet. All these innocent sounding things make for poems rooted with grief and regret but mostly love. (And now she is definitely Sharon, not Ms. Olds. You envy her forgiveness now. You wouldn't dare reassure her things will be alright, because you know that she understands more than you are capable of understanding. You would take back every negative thought you've had about your family except that her narrative is telling you no, you can forgive what you need to forgive, forget what you need to forget, but never feel your story isn't important. You feel that once Sharon is finished telling you about her parents, she will ask you about yours, and no matter the size of your fondness or grievances, she will listen and you will feel everything is...not right...not better...survivable...allowed.) In the third section Sharon leads us away from her past, into the garden of her first love, her first kiss, and her first sex before we arrive in her 1987 present. In "Premonition" she drives through a parking lot filled with children, terrified she will injure or kill one with her car. Then she drives her car into your sternum. She didn't turn on her blinkers. Her hard left against the red light leaves you sitting in your own car, terrified to move or not move. The final section introduces us to her children. She mentioned them in the third section but now we learn their names and watch them grow for a bit. Sharon is a thoughtful mother, but she also respects you. Each poem is a picture she takes out of her wallet to show you how she loves them. And, and this is unusual for doting parents, none of her photos look the same. It is not four headshots of a child dressed up and wearing identical forced smiles. Everything is candid. Everything shows she, and her children, and obviously everyone, is flawed. Love is flawed most of all. But worth it. You want to thank Sharon for talking to you. (Oh god, are we still snaking in a line at the post office? Is that sort of metaphor still happening? Because the window is closed and the lights are out. And you feel that maybe your letter wasn't important enough to mail, but you also feel that you already mailed it. Sharon gives you such conflicting feelings of accomplishment.) You want to thank Sharon for not talking down to you or thinking you needed her to explain her feelings. You want to thank her for leaving her thesaurus at home and just talking to you like a normal person. A person who maybe likes poetry or maybe likes interweaving flash fiction. You just want to thank her. Inspired by Morgan Parker's Other People's Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night, recommended by Valerie Loveland. The inspiration comes from her title "On Children, How I Hate Them And Want To Corrupt Them, And How You Know I Hate Them, And What That Could Mean". Working With Children Inspired Me To Grow Up And Be Happier Than The Type Of People Who Work With ChildrenWhen i was too young to know
better I loved the people and hated the job Kids who tried to climb me out of their parents’ poverty And parents who paid me mistress money to keep their children out of their schedules There was never just one type of reason to quit Before the degree was a piece of paper It was a life sentence chosen at seventeen when i thought adults only despaired occasionally and that depression was chicken pox It was a teacher we’d nicknamed Princess Thundercloud who taught me to stare like amaretto sour My face part barometer part classified document that everyone suspected they knew the contents of but nobody had actual proof When Princess Thudercloud was pinned under a car And the ambulances arrived on time for her but late for retrieving her students’ now bloodied homework and the list of which children would be picked up by late parents and which would ride home on the bus Parents and teachers ignored the sirens around the but my coworker might be dead apologies And insisted there must be a better system to keep track of their kids And why weren’t we already implementing it? I’d like to think my mother loved me more than paperwork flying away from the broken glass of a woman she only spoke to on conference night But that she’d at least be decent enough to suffer a schedule glitch in a moment of silence for a misfortune bigger than having to leave work early to pick up a son who should've been sent home on the bus I gave up my career to pour coffee A beverage i don’t even drink Managed a wine store Another concoction of capitalism and beverages I had no taste for And quit that too I made a great server Happy at twenty percent but always striving for enough to retire I don’t miss the kids but i miss being the sort of person kids liked Now i push off the heads of strangers exhausted by sitting next to me on buses Never imagine a summer day no matter the heat of my impending future Inspired by Anne Carson's Autobiography Of Red, recommended by Kári Tulinius. The style and format of this poem is modeled after Appendix C of the book: "Clearing Up The Question Of Stesichoros' Blinding By Helen" Or Anything1. Either poetry can change your life or it can not.
2. Heather suggests to Dean that he should read Anne Carson’s Autobiography Of Red with the same tame words that I recommend. Should. Enjoy. Narrative. Story. Sexuality. Island. Family. Volcano. Red. All these gentle things that flow toward you at a pace that, when compared to the way work and relationships are constantly crashing you against the surprisingly giving rocks of your everyday, seems reasonable. 3. When the book is returned with no new pages folded or creases on the cover, Heather asks how Dean enjoyed it. I have no speech in me. 4. Dean says It was ok. It didn’t change my life or anything. 5. Things that have changed my life are not the death and everyday unfairness of the current police state, but a free granola bar from someone who doesn’t want me to adapt to their religious beliefs, or a train that shows up when expected, or poetry. Every poetry changes my life in some way, even the poetry about how flowers represent grief in ways I have no context or wikipedia for. Poetry about help-me is the hair of someone you love brushing against your neck when you forgot you weren’t alone. Forced rhymes about politics are a parade route shutting down my way to work, and standing in a detour is someone I have missed and can talk with for hours instead of inventorying books or pouring whiskey. 6. How does a poetry not always change your life? 7. Heather because I am speechless says Changing your life is a pretty high bar for a poetry collection. I just meant did you like it? 8. Of course I love the man who suggested I read Autobiography Of Red but not in a manuscript full of unrequited lust way. When we met, I confused his native origin for his sexuality, being Scandinavian and being Queer being similar mosaics when being squinted at through LSD. The confusion was barely an hour and reached the bar of changing my life. 9. Odinn and I met of course through poetry as Heather and I met through poetry as Dean and I met through poetry as Heather and Dean met through poetry and what is life but a series of friendships forged by an art you sometimes hate? 10. Dean shrugs. 11. My father lives on an island I hardly ever visit. Heather has been there with me. Dean has been there with me. Odinn lives in Iceland again, which is a different island. 12. A drunk also student asked Odinn what language people speak in Iceland. Icelandic he said. Right said the drunk and I speak Americanish. Do you speak German or Dutch? 13. What does it take besides a common language to change a life? In high school, a sort of friend came out as gay a week before his graduation. I was a Sophomore who knew men’s bodies existed but not how they felt or tasted. I invited myself to his room with no logical pretext and we flipped through our yearbook pointing at boys we found attractive before blowing each other, each of us coming into portions of brown paper towels ripped off a roll he’d stolen from the men’s room. We didn’t see each other or talk again for thirteen years, when we friended each other on Facebook, pretending the only thing we had in common was singing tenor in the select choir. 14. Sex is a language I speak fluently but barely understand. 15. In Autobiography Of Red, a dragonishboy falls in love with an older boy whose love destroys him which is a modernization of one of the Labors Of Herakles, which is also every relationship I’ve ever had, except that sometimes I am dragonboy Greydon, sometimes I am Herakles, but often I am merely the cattle or the dog destroyed trivially so that Herakles can get at his actual target. 16. No character in a tragedy deserves more sympathy than any other character. Everyone in a tragedy has been deliberately placed in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person so that misery or jealousy or a volcano of misunderstanding can wipe out the victims and let the survivors suffer their continued existence. 17. Everything I’ve ever read or experienced is a form of tragedy. 18. Tragedy is a form of poetry and poetry is a thing that constantly changes lives, or poetry is a form of living that is in a constant state of tragedy, or some Tuesday you will be in a car blasting Paul’s Boutique and eating soft pretzels with someone you care about and one of you will probably die before the other one and is all this singing and driving worth the eventual grief? 19. Of course it is. What’s wrong with you? 20. Grief is what’s wrong with me. And it hasn’t even happened yet. 21. When you take someone to meet the island of your family make sure you love them. Do not let your family see your indifference. Better a stage fight. Better a Thanksgiving Dinner of upturned gravy and who you Know they were fucking when they told you they were going to a science fiction convention, than the uninteresting silence of reading Buzzfeed articles with someone you can’t even bother to dislike. 22. Where does the red come in? My hair when I was younger and more certain what I wrote would never hurt anyone? The fire engine I thought I could becoming. The impending middle aged convertible that might loom had I not surrendered driving so I could live in a city with an art I barely recognize and people constantly leaving? Something as trite as anger? 23. A split watermelon on this July porch is more pink than red and faster to disappear than misplaced emotions. 24. Saying Nothing is as laborious as living is both melodramatic and an undeniable truth. 25. I’d rather read about someone’s horrible adolescence than listen to it or watch it unravel in front of me. 26. I am a volcano reaching out to a city of people I love, not understanding why people are running from the obvious destruction of my arms. 27. #26 is the stupidest, most egotistically ignorant thing I’ve written in months. Someone will identify with it. Someone will laugh at it. Someone will nod their head, pretending it even makes sense. 28. My favorite stories are ones I should identify with but don’t. I love what I mistakenly think I will eventually understand. 29. The train I take to work is red. Does that count? 30. The fence around my third story porch is painted red and has successfully kept any of my friends or roommates from plunging to their injury. I have talked with Dean on this porch. And Heather. I wrote a letter to Odinn on this porch but never mailed it. I want to believe we are all safe. 31. Life changes poetry and poetry changes life and even a Taylor Swift song is a type of poetry and even what I am doing with my only day off from work this week is a type of life. I didn’t set this bar but I guess I should thank whoever made these changes so attainable. 32. Heather asks me if The Autobiography Of Red changed my life as I haven’t actually said anything for this whole discussion. And I say something that I immediately forget. |
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