June Jordan

For Alice Walker (a summertime tanka)

Redwood grove and war
You and me talking
gender grief and ash

I say, 'God! It's all so huge'
You say, 'These sweet trees: This tree'

June Jordan's simple poem about a walk she took with Alice Walker is poignant and important. The poem gets where it's going without pretension and with a very big heart. It makes me want to be a better poet. And the poem seems like evidence that poetry can capture and express complicated feelings, evidence that I can share with people, including friends, who say they don't 'get' poetry.

Those are the two main reasons why I used For Alice Walker to introduce a section in my book Wild Once and Captured. Because I wanted to associate myself with a real poet and I wanted people who don't read poetry to think that it really can speak to them, about them, and, even, on their behalf.

I used to read Jordan's columns when she was a regular contributor to The Progressive. She was a powerful writer and an acute political thinker, though not always a subtle one. Like, here, for instance:

"Into that infamous Tuesday inferno of fire and structural collapse, a humbling number of men and women fell to a horrifying death. And now the rest of us remain, stricken by fear, stricken by grief.
We have become a wilderness of jeopardized loved ones, and terrifying strangers," Jordan wrote during the buildup to war that began so suddenly in the weeks after planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

I sometimes thought her writing poetic, but I rarely thought of her as a poet. I would read her columns and move on, almost always affected, sometimes greatly moved. I can't help thinking that she affected me so often and so strongly because she was a poet, whether or not I was aware of that condition.

On an unnumbered page at the very beginning of Naming Our Destiny, a collection of her poems, there are 16 lines, untitled, that put me in mind of magic and great mystery, and of Jordan's occasional mastery of those things:

These poems
they are things that I do
in the dark
reaching for you
whoever you are
and are you ready?

These words
they are stones in the water
running away

These skeletal lines
They are desperate arms for my longing and love.

I am a stranger
learning to worship the strangers
around me

whoever you are
whoever I may become.

In the book the lines are italicized, but the rest of her poems are not; maybe to make those lines feel more conversational, maybe just to make me pay more attention. And I do pay attention...I mean, I am...I mean, I will...but when Jordan says she is "reaching for you, whoever you are," I start thinking about a similar set of lines from Walt Whitman:

Whoever you are
now I place my hand upon you
that you be
my poem

I love that Whitman and Jordan (both of whom frequently announced that they were "an American") reach out with "desperate arms" and lay their hands on us with such abandon. I give my absolute consent to Whitman and Jordan both. Come ahead, feel me, and let your touch linger.

The truth is, Jordan thinks about such things all the time:

Meta-Rhetoric

Homophobia
racism
self-definition
revolutionary struggle

the subject tonight for
public discussion is
our love

we sit apart
apparently at opposite ends of a line
and I feel the distance
between my eyes
between my legs
a dry
dust topography of our separation

In the meantime people
dispute the probabilities
of union

They reminisce about the chasmic histories
no ideology yet dares to surmount

I disagree with you
You disagree with me
The problem seems to be a matter of scale

Can you give me the statistical dimensions
of your mouth on my mouth
your breasts resting on my own?

I believe the agenda involves
several inches (at least)
of coincidence and endless recovery

My hope is that our lives will declare
this meeting open

Jordan's poems sometimes count the dead in places like Soweto and Nicaragua and Mississippi. Rape, each time it happens, occurs over and over again, because Jordan feels each rape as though it happened to her and, she wants us to understand, it happens to the rest of us, too.

When a woman was gang raped in a notorious incident in New Bedford, Mass., Jordan felt it:

This is a promise I am making
it here
legs spread on the pool
table of New Bedford

she wrote in Poem on the Road, for Alice Walker.

The complete poem is so full of Jordan's anguish and rage, it keeps breaking rhythm and building a new one and breaking it again. It's like Jordan can hardly talk and hardly stop talking.

June Jordan puts me in mind of Walt Whitman a lot, except she never pretends to a booming pride. But around the two of them, you never know when sex might break out, or wounds might begin to bleed, or compassion well up.

June Jordan was so fierce and so loving and so passionate about the blood that flows in all of us that
we risk terrible loss if we forget her, or never know her. She's still out there for the knowing.

The Generosity of Poets

I don't write
     about poetry
because a poem takes
     pretty much
all the energy I'm willing
     to spare.

Still, about poetry,
     or poets,
I do have this
     to say:

I am grateful for all
     the other poets
and all the things
     they've shared.

Marge Piercy's Joy Road and Livernois

My name was Pat. We used to read Poe in bed

till we heard blood dripping in the closet.

I fell in love with a woman who could ring

all bells of my bones tolling, jangling.

But she in her cape and her Caddy

had to shine in the eyes of the other pimps,

a man among monkeys, so she turned me on the streets

to strut my meek ass. To quiet my wailing,

she taught me to slip the fire in my arm,

the white thunder rolling over till nothing

hurt but coming down. One day I didn’t.

I was fifteen. My face gleamed in the casket.

My name was Evie, we used to shoplift,

my giggling wide-eyed questions, your fast hands;

we picked up boys together on the corners.

The cops busted me for stealing, milled me,

sent me up for prostitution because I weren’t

no virgin. I met my boyfriend in the courts.

Together we robbed a liquor store that wouldn’t

sell us whiskey. I liked to tote a gun.

It was the cleanest thing I ever held.

It was the only power I ever had.

I could look any creep straight on in the eyes.

A state trooper blew my face off in Marquette.

My name was Peggy. Across the street from the gas-

works my mom raised nine kids. My brother-

in-law porked me while my sister gave birth,

choking me with the pillow when I screamed.

I got used to it. My third boyfriend knocked me up.

Now I’ve been pregnant for twenty years,

always a bigger belly than me to push around

like an overloaded wheelbarrow ready to spill

on the blacktop. Now it’s my last one,

a tumor big as a baby when they found it.

When I look in the mirror I see my mom.

Remember how we braided each other’s hair,

mine red, yours black. Now I am bald

as an egg and nearly boiled through.

I was Teresa. I used to carry a long clasp

knife I stole from my uncle. Running nights

through the twitching streets, I’d finger it.

It made me feel as mean as any man.

My boyfriend worked on cars until they flew.

All those hot night riding around and around

when we had no place to go but back.

Those nights we raced out on the highway

faster faster till the blood fizzed in my throat

like shaken soda. It shot in an arc

when he hit the pole and I went out the windshield,

the knife I showed you how to use still

on its leather thong between my breasts

where it didn’t save me from being cut in two.

I was Gladys. Like you, I stayed in school.

I did not lay down in back seats with boys.

I became a nurse, married, had three sons.

My ankles swelled. I worked the night hours

among the dying and accident cases. My husband

left me for a girl he met in a bar, left debts,

a five-year-old Chevy, a mortgage.

My oldest came home in a body bag. My youngest

ran off. The middle one drinks beer and watches

the soaps since the Kelsey-Hays plant closed.

Then my boy began to call me from the alley.

Every night he was out there calling, Mama,

help me. It hurts, Mama! Take me home.

This is the locked ward and the drugs

eat out my head like busy worms.

With each of them I lay down, my twelve-

year-old scrawny tough body like weathered

wood pressed to their pain, and we taught

each other love and pleasure and ourselves.

We invented the places, the sounds, the smells,

the little names. At twelve I was violent

in love, a fiery rat, a whip snake,

a starving weasel, all teeth and speed

except for the sore fruit of my new breasts

pushing out. What did I learn? To value

my pleasure and how little the love of women

can shield against the acid city rain.

You surge among my many ghosts. I never think

I got out because I was smart, brave, hard-

working, attractive. Evie was brave,

Gladys and Teresa were smart. Peggy worked

sixteen hours. Pat gleamed like olivewood

polished to a burnish as if fire lived in wood.

I wriggled through an opening left just big enough

for one. There is no virtue in survival,

only luck, and a streak of indifference

that I could take off and keep going.

I got out of those Detroit blocks where the air

eats stone and melts flesh, where jobs

dangle and you jump and jump, where there are

more drugs than books, more ways to die

than ways to live, because I ran fast,

ran hard, and never stopped looking back.

It is not looking back that turned me

to salt, no, I taste my salt from the mines

under Detroit, the salt of our common juices.

Girls who lacked everything except trouble,

contempt and rough times, girls

used like urinals, you are the salt

keeps me from rotting as the years swell.

I am the fast train you are travelling in

to a world of a different color, and the love

we cupped so clumsily in our hands to catch

rages and drives onward, an engine of light.

"Joy Road and Livernois" by Marge Piercy, from Available Light. (c) Middlemarsh, 1988.

To suffer it all again

It has always been obvious

to my lovers and children,

to comrades and friends,

that I am an angry man.

I didn’t start that way,

or mean to be like that.

I was never made by anyone

to be other than who I am.

How I got that way remains

beyond my comprehension

and expressions of regret

have been too long delayed.

Confession helps, of course,

but memory makes a better bridge

to a second life in joy and dance

and boiling blood and small victory.

Anger abides as always,

but bends before the recurring wish

to jazz it up once more,

to suffer it all again. 

Darkness at Noon

The unnamed fog that stalks by day,

is dark and deep

and flips the pencil in my hand,

erasing faster than I write.

I am pummeled and buried

and wandered away,

unable to say

how I solve this.

Rich, rich as we go

I loved the moment

leaving work behind,

striding long, traveling lean,

one job done, another to come.

The way to where she was,

to where we would welcome

touch and wonder—

not right then, but coming soon—

the way to where she was

rich with byways,

forks and crossings,

some were blazed and others not.

I was fast and I was ready,

and quickly rolling through,

long and longer,

still and quiet,

alone and alone

with green leaves rustling

and winged birds soaring

and damp earth rising

In my turn,

I am rising

to move again along my path,

striding long

and traveling lean

one job done,

another to come,

and rich, rich as we go.

Glorious Day

Once I walked
on a glorious day.
Early light stroking
greens, reds, and even the yellows
to passionate fits,
birds raising
a unified chorus,
leaves and small mammals dancing
a synchronized rustle.

Walked through this
celebratory space,
tuning in slowly
until the clear message came:
This is a glorious fall day.

Justice

It is in our DNA

to dream things,

to build some version

of what we dream.

But we have moved so far

from where we started,

standing alone until someone else

stood up, someone on whose shoulders

we could stand to see further,

and see that we were

standing on the shoulders

of those who stood

on the shoulders of those

who stood—and so on and back

through all those compounded dreams,

the serial dreams of who we were

before we were ourselves,

before there were dreams

of complicated things

like wealth and justice,

back when we aspired

to a day without toil,

without torment or terror,

until all those hopes and wishes

became a dream of justice,

a very new thing compared

to how long we have been dreaming

of lesser things.

There is still

another DNA driven thing

that sees a vision of ourselves

resting when the building’s done,

resting in the thing we’ve built,

that sees ourselves

relaxing into the dream

that became the thing we built,

like some retiree

on a white sand beach

who is thrilled to spend a day

without dreaming.

Mind and boldness mix and blend

in the dream we aspire to build,

wishing along the way

to be done with this building,

to be living in the dream complete;

and wishing along the way

to seize the dream of justice,

the thing that can’t be built,

cannot be seized

or even dreamed alone,

the thing that sometimes seems,

but never is,

unbuildable.

And there we wish to rest,

relax into the thing that can’t be built

alone, will always be unfinished.

It follows then that in the matter

of justice, it is the journey

that makes the difference,

that becomes our measure.

Then,

like she who is no longer distressed by struggle,

we must be satisfied to dream,

and to build, together.

Thanks for Writing, Jorie Graham

Mid-morning. Overcast. A brisk breeze carrying a hint of chill.

Lots of birds about. A jittery flight of starlings comes and goes.

As the breeze picks up, becomes wind, the dominant noise is a rustle of leaves so loud it makes me think, "racket of leaves."

There's a warning on that wind. "You won't be wanting to sit here, nursing your outdoor poetry shtick, when the rain on the way actually arrives."

I open Jorie Graham's book, Overlord. It's a beautiful book, a thin volume, hardcover, more rectangular than most books, but perfect for poetry. A small, evocative collage, centered against the black background of the dust jacket, features a red smear, something like an ideogram, overlaying fragments of newspapers in French and English. The book design is totally first-class. Lucky Jorie. I'm jealous.

I don't usually want to like Jorie Graham. I don't "get" a good number of her poems, which frequently seem to feature literary allusions I don't understand. I have no idea who she is really, but I always think of her as some genteel WASP lady from the East Coast, somewhere, or maybe from some college town where one of her parents was a professor of literature. But I don't actually know who she is.

And, oh boy, I really do like her poem, "Impressionism," which begins with "the silent little girl in a white frock," posed on a picturesque little bridge, imagined, perhaps, or strategically positioned in the French landscape, so that Graham's poem might begin with the kind of Victorian image characteristic of so many Impressionist paintings.

The girl, whose "hair is held by tiny yellow bows," seems to recede in the distance, replaced by a heron whose "foot uplifts in the isosceles of just a single wading-step--half-interrupted," revealing "the half-truth that can be caught."

Further along, the poet observes "eleven crabs  attached, all feeding wildly" and "clacking their armors into each other," not long before they themselves are "crushed, each, at the head by the child's hammer taken to them one by one."

As she collects her many impressions of the world around her, Graham discovers that she has moved on to a place a surprisingly long distance away.

"There's no way back believe me.
I'm writing you from there."

And, as the rain about which the wind had given warning begins to fall, outdoor poetry season is interrupted. It is the indoors for me, at least for now. But I am grateful to Graham for taking the time to write.

A Thing Worth Repeating

Thinking a thing worth repeating

is part of how human we are.

Sharing that thought

with the context it needs

to make sense to the world

as it does in your head

is the work coming next,

the labor ahead;

is how you are heard saying

your thing worth repeating.

As If We Planned It All

We remember all

or none.

There is no part way here,

no victimizer

without victims,

no Ariel Castro without

Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight.

No Castro without Jocelyn Berry,

the daughter of raped Amanda.

No Castro without all the stories

of Berry and DeJesus and Knight

determined to endure.

No improbabilities here,

not once the stories begin

and grind their way to some end.

No stories without all the stories,

without knowing how Ariel Castro

became himself, without the pain he caused,

the pain from which he came.

Pain with or without the courage to flee.

End with or without the will to turn

and face the demons coming on.

About Ariel Castro

there is everything

and nothing to say.

Who will tell the story

of how Castro got that way?

Who will say how his life

was truncated and tormented

and tortured before he met

Figueroa and Berry and DeJesus and Knight

and used horror to change

the arc of their lives?

Ah, the sympathy we feel for Castro's victims,

the means by which we hide

from the way we sent

Berry and DeJesus and Knight

to twisted therapy in Castro’s home.

Who will remember

Berry and Dejesus and Knight

on their way to whatever happens next,

happens after Castro has hung himself?

Who remembers Grimilda Figueroa

and her four children?

Who remembers what we did

or didn’t do to Trayvon Martin

before George Zimmerman?

Remembers that we sent Zimmerman to meet

Martin on the street?

Who remembers James Byrd dragged

behind John King’s truck for miles?

Who remembers Matthew Shepherd,

remembers what we did?

Mary Oliver's Dog Songs rule

Vick Mickunas gave me his review copy of Dog Songs, the soon-to-be-released book of poems by Mary Oliver.

He wrote a little note in the book, signed it over to me this way:

"Dear Jeff, poetry is an art. It rarely pays but it sure feels good. Vick"

On Vick's radio show, recorded over the phone while I was still in DC, I recited "The Courage All Around " and "Always Jewish, Lately Palestinian."

Then Vick recited Mary O's poem, "How It Is With Us, How It Is With Them."

It's a great poem. Everyone should read it. "The Storm (Bear)" is another good one, short and wise. It says better what I've tried to say in some of my own poems, like, say, "Ecstasy" or "The Smell of Eternity," which is also a dog poem.

But the poem from Dog Songs that I want to share here is "If You Are Holding This Book," which reads:

You may not agree, you may not care, but
if you are holding this book you should know
that of all the sights I love in this world--
and there are plenty--very near the top of
the list is this one: dogs without leashes."

There's only one thing that I'd change in Oliver's poem. I'd move the "of" at the end of the fourth line  to the beginning of the fifth and last line. How's that for picking nits?
                                                       

Ecstasy

In this moment,

the world around is a perfect space.

The hot point inside you

and the cold point there

balance the hot and cold

the whole universe around.

In this moment,

you rip loose, run

naked, unshod,

down streets and alleys,

toe and heel transforming asphalt

to sea foam, soothing your soul.

In this moment,

you stride this way,

whip arms swinging,

shoulders like easy oil,

greasing and flinging you

through damp and distance.

The darkness divides for you,

wayfarer,

long strider stampeding by,

bearing secrets.

Like racehorses and hound dogs,

nostrils grasping and snatching

your own scent, the moist surround,

all the exuberant plants of the night.

You are hailed,

summoned

and called

to this exquisite place.

The Transgressive Acts of Men

Excluded from the matrilineal ascent,

I intrude.

I am before and beyond

all my mothers,

all my daughters,

mothering the clan;

in my DNA,

the Amazonian last daughter

staring in wonder

at the brink,

holding the hand

of all my sisters,

mindful of our brothers,

among whom I once was counted;

all who we were,

all who we are gone nova.

The end

when it comes,

almost more than we can bear,

more for certain than we can know,

memories on the way,

partners on the road,

dreams on the wing,

exploding outward.

Tomorrow for the second step

I’m thinking time

for the next book,

fiction or otherwise,

bio- or auto-,

titled maybe

“Misdiagnosed, self-medicated, freely

associated and so on

and so forth”

sub-titled maybe

“A memoir of traps

in place and in time”

authored by Longing to Get Out

ghostwritten maybe

by Anything for a Buck

and published maybe

by Slow to Print Books & Son

thinking maybe that if the title

and sub-title and author’s name

and ghostwriter’s credit are

long enough and clear enough

the book itself can go short.

Page one would begin

because that is what page one does,

page two would begin

with a cliché

about journeys of self-discovery

and segue into

a discussion of agoraphobia

depression and related maladies

and my favorite vegetable

treatment, a topical ointment

guaranteed

to get the hero out the door

where what happens next

will not be therapeutic,

but colorful maybe

 and as the train of thought

rumbles on thinking

I’ll post this on Facebook maybe

and the train suddenly derails

with a roaring and a squealing

the hero somehow avoiding injury,

dragging himself home,

suffering a few cuts,

making somehow out of all of this
a silk potholder, if not a purse,

embroidering as finishing touch

“Tomorrow for the second step!”

If not us...

What if geography overwhelmed

history? Left us with no story

to tell? It would begin

and begin and begin.

The end, if it came,

would be a long time coming

and look like we’d seen it all before.

We wouldn’t decisively know

what we’d seen and the words

for regret would sound little

and late, if we heard them at all.

When the glaciers came,

they’d press down hard,

grinding and gravelling

our stillborn lives and,

if we could see ourselves,

we’d be so much unambitious

dust. It would begin

and begin and begin,

and when the wind picked up

the dust, it would whisper

late summer’s turn to fall,

snow yet to come,

to bury all our undreamed dreams

in mounds where our endless

undanced dances

would begin and begin

and begin

a fruitless drift,

never to arrive at the foot

of the tower,

with the faint image

of god unremarked,

and nothing but ghosts passing by

in a place no one could name.

Never to get to where

history remembers who we are,
where hope is a gift

we must work harder to give.

Two Poems

Bends for a Time as if Tame

Already begun

the slipping away,

the traveler poem comes

on the crest of a wave,

seeking two or three words, maybe four.

The flank-heaving poem

rests in our care,

bends, for a time,

as if tame.

Next the words and the writer

stand on the shore

thanking the poem

for the time,

watching the poem

roll away.

Counting on You

I wish my voice

would rumble the bones

in your ear

as it thunders in mine,

could speak the same truth

it whispers in mine,

could sing the same song

that I'm hearing.