Poetry

"Dust," Dorianne Laux

Someone spoke to me last night,

told me the truth. Just a few words,

but I recognized it.

I knew I should make myself get up,

write it down, but it was late,

and I was exhausted from working

all day in the garden, moving rocks.

Now, I remember only the flavor —

not like food, sweet or sharp.

More like a fine powder, like dust.

And I wasn’t elated or frightened,

but simply rapt, aware.

That’s how it is sometimes —

God comes to your window,

all bright light and black wings,

and you’re just too tired to open it.

 

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"First Kiss," April Lardner

 

This collision of teeth, of tongues and lips,

is like feeling for the door

in a strange room, blindfolded.

He imagines he knows her

after four dates, both of them taking pains

to laugh correctly, to make eye contact.

She thinks at least this long first kiss

postpones the moment she'll have to face

four white walls, the kitchen table,

its bowl of dried petals and nutmeg husks,

the jaunty yellow vase with one jaunty bloom,

the answering machine's one bloodshot eye.

 

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"Crying Man" Charles Douthat

  At O'Hare, after a first jump west to California,
I thought my father was dying, as I waited

for the connecting flight. Being hungry
I ate pizza with the people eating pizza.

Feeling uninformed, I bought newspapers,
opened magazines at a bookshop wall.

Near my gate, I pretended not to watch
a dozen others waiting, as they pretended

not to watch me. But finally, in a hectic airport
restroom, I heard the crying man in his stall.

"Oh God," he cried, behind a stained steel door.
He didn't sound old. And in his privacy, not shy.

"Oh dear God," rang harshly in the close tiled room.
I stood alongside others, a simple traveler

at a public urinal. Behind me the restless waited
their turns. "Oh dear life!" came the third cry.

I shook myself, zipped, found a vacant sink for washing.
Spurting water dwindled to a trickle on my hands.

I lathered and rinsed as I'd been taught. Grabbed
for paper towel. Didn't linger at the mirror.

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 I really don't want to talk about these too much. For once, I actually enjoyed the poems I read, and I think it wasn't so much that these were better poems than I've read before, but that I didn't need to analyze them for structure and style and voice and allusion and metonomy and all those other useless things that became the focus in my Muggle Comprehensive before being admitted to Hogwarts. The point of poetry is to elict an emotional response, not to check off a bunch of useless literary terms. So my comments on each poem with be brief. The first poem moved me because it represents my current faith life in the most accurate way I've ever seen. It succeeds in articulating a problem, a feeling, that I've had for quite some time. The second poem made me laugh with its description of kissing, and tugged at my heart as I empathized with the poor girl waiting for a message. So poignant, so real. The final one illustrates the lack of compassion and the self-centeredness that characterizes the generations of both adults and teens today. Nobody cares. It's profoundly sad, but only because I have witnessed that happen and have done it myself. Tragic. These poems have spoken to me because, for once, I wasn't too tired to listen.