Brute Strength

Naomi Shihab Nye chose to highlight this poem, Brute Strength, by Emily Skaja, in her weekly column in the New York Times Sunday Magazine on August 25. Nye also noted that U.S. poet laureate Joy Harjo selected Brute, Skaja's first poetry collection, to win the Walt Whitman Award for the first-time poets.

In Brute Strength, "Skaja conjures the searing history of a jagged relationship, then mixes a tonic for it: images, elegies and invocations that let the speaker reinvent her human power," Nye wrote. And that, "reinvent[ing] her human power is exactly what Skaja does here.

Silenced, reduced by her experience, denied (or robbed) of agency, Skaja blasts her way out, lifting off from the memories of who she once was, a "witch girl, unafraid of anything, flea-spangled little yard rat...girl who wouldn't let a boy hit her"--that girl resurrected in her adulthood, promising to bust out or die trying. But, really, already busted out, no longer mute, writing her own story.

Brute Strength

Soldier for a lost cause, brute, mute woman

written out of my own story, I’ve been trying

to cast a searchlight over swamp-woods & parasitic ash

back to my beginning, that girlhood—

kite-wisp clouded by gun salutes & blackbirds

tearing out from under the hickories

all those fine August mornings so temporary

so gold-ringed by heat-haze & where is that witch girl

unafraid of anything, flea-spangled little yard rat, runt

of no litter, queen, girl who wouldn’t let a boy hit her,

girl refusing to be It in tag, pulling that fox hide

heavy around her like a flag? Let me look at her.

Tell her on my honor, I will set the wedding dress on fire

when I’m good & ready or she can bury me in it.

--Emily Skaja

So, a further thought. What's with all the ampersands? Skaja has done away with every "and" that might have occurred here, and why not? Ands don't do much and ampersands look so much more muscular. Do they change the meaning &/or impact of the things they conjoin?

Let's see: There's "swamp-woods & parasitic ash," there's "gun salutes & blackbirds," there's "heat-haze & where is that witch girl," & there is also "good & ready." It's not hard to imagine Emily Skaja, finally good & ready, thinking, "I don't need no stinking' and.

And while we're at scattered postscripts, I have to say that I have a poem of my own that includes respect for witch -girls, notably "Julie Anna, you were a witch baby, wise with foreknowledge."

Here is that poem:

Love to Babies
Nathan Night Rain,

you were an infant with

apple cheeks and patience.

Julie Anna,

you were a witch baby,

wise with foreknowledge.

And Brendan Isaac,

you were king baby

with windmill arms and bicycle legs,

wailing your loud strong music.

As Isaac brought joy

to Abraham and Sarah,

with a handful of weight,

with the heat of new beginning,

with the scent of everything to come,

so have you brought

gift after gift after gift

of Nate asleep on my heart,

warm weight waxing,

innocent of his fierce protector;

of Julie at midnight recalled,

fresh weight needing nothing

but that which was freely given;

of yourself,

urgent and new;

all of you, gift after gift after gift

to a father stirred and grateful

that the elements combined as you.

Neverending Story

You know the story,

the one that ends with the hero

face down in the mud.

Or, maybe, the story that ends

at the by-no-means guaranteed discovery

of the protagonist dead on the bed,

her eyes shut tight against

light and dark,

out of range of the magic that forever

lurks and lingers in the rare and intangible air.

They are, I tell you,

the self-same story but for the details,

which I do not mean to demean.

After all, if the stories are the same

wherever they end,

and at all of their ends,

then the details

—the way the life came

and the way the life went—

twisting and turning,

falling down and getting up,

are all that really matters.

And,

we so stipulate,

the details, the twisting and the turning,

the magic before

and the magic that lingers,

the falling up and the getting down,

are the major symptoms,

the proof we can infer,

of the grinding wheel,

the great grinding wheel,

the irresistible force

constantly confronting

the human (objects) on their way,

and always in the way

of the grinding, travelling wheel

that somehow contrives

to always be rolling down

our very path, our whatever path,

to wherever we meant to be,

to where we would be,

in whole or in part,

but for the wheel that rolls

always against us,

always failing to know

that we are exactly there

where we are.

All of which means

that at the very least,

it makes no sense to blame the wheel

that has no ethics, no passion, no fun and no life.

Entirely unlike our uncelebrated selves,

with our vast potential

for ethics and passion and fun

and life before death.

So tell the stories, all,

of Jack, say, and Jill

and the great fun they had

on the twisting way uphill,

and the tumble down,

and the get back up to go back up,

where there remained more fun to be had,

or still a world to spy from the top,

until one broke a body part

or broke the spirit that gets back up 

and left the other to solo the rest of the way.

All we know is that they set out one day,

one ordinary, even familiar, day,

to work at their endless tote

and on the way they ran afoul

of warlords, maybe, or amphibians

—the rare bloodthirsty kind—

or calendars stuffed full of deadlines.

They labored, dripped sweat, danced and dodged

and laughed aloud and fled in terror.

It wasn’t much,

but it was life

and it would do.

Sometimes they shared their load

and sometimes traded it for a different load,

or passed it on and sat to rest.

One day very like the day before

and the day to come.

It isn’t much,

but it is life

and it will do.

The Courage All Around

Late-night honest

with myself

My boy shames me

The courage he shows

drumming at the Metro

Spare change pours in

Folded bills drifting like

snow covering his lap

Ten years old, first

sharing a buck

with a woman who asks,

then shooing her away

when she won’t stop

asking for more

He goes about his business,

a lionheart tending his

pride of intentions,

while I flinch at the work

before me, at stepping up

before you, at speaking my piece

But where he’s heading,

where heart and skill

and the company of others,

the company of you,

colleagues with an instinct

to be movement and reach

we can believe in,

that place, that thought, swells

my heart The world you will build

beckons and beguiles

and because the heart is

a complicated thing

I feel no shame here

I feel the courage all around 

The Torrent

I read all your poems,

I hear all your voices.

I hear the songs, the love,

the yearning, the striving,

the growing, the greening,

the moaning and the reaching

and the burning down.

I hear the idiom of the peoples,

of the gathered and the scattered,

I hear big and I hear small,

I hear the murmur and the shout,

the wounded and the brave,

the quick feet and

the electric slide.

I hear the tapping and the drumming

and the chanting and the ringing

syncopation of the high notes,

and the sudden, but long expected,

booming of the bass

beating far away

and closing.

I feel the thunder

that follows on the flash

and the torrent of the words that

are thumping on the roof of the world.

Tripping

The fear of being

consumed by something big,

something fierce,

is dispensed with

in the certain knowledge

that I have flown,

that I have twisted and soared,

that I have dared and died

and emerged from all,

or almost all,

as myself,

or as some other self,

and laughed and loved

and found and shared

a bit of comfort,

and found

that I believe that there will always be

another someone,

more and more somebodies,

perhaps an infinity of those,

to do the same

for each other

again and again,

for as long as words are magic.