That Morning in AugustA Poem by Marie AnzaloneShe told me but this isn’t poetry. Poetry is nice. It should make me feel good. So, I tried. I tried to write only of ephemeral kisses and happy well-fed people. Of carefree sparrows and respect for my leaders and my great dream of marrying the right man with nice straight teeth and a morning power routine and our two perfect children. Of emotionally safe sex and love of angels and puppies.
Then I dreamed I was dying in a cage made of daytime television and bleach and Styrofoam. I started to hear voices, and they rose as a crescendo and a trumpet and a nuclear air raid siren.
They told me of what the tree said in its own defense. The lullaby the wind sang to the pines on their last night before a visit from men with chainsaws. I felt what a tired bird feels in your city when one day everything it knew is concrete. I read an opinion of war written in blood on the walls and vast silences of shelled homes. I read the clinical notes of the night-shift nurse in San Pedro Sula. I read what comforted a girl giving birth on a refugee boat in the Adriatic Sea.
They told me, Poetry: is what is exposed when the polish of “nice” wears thin and falls away. It is what the boy who committed suicide could not find to tell his family; and what the kid in a robbery could not say to his friends. It is what people who only ever ride in cars miss, that makes them hate the bus rider; and what the bus-rider might put into words if she knew how, and were not too tired, from riding in buses.
It is the raw freedom exposed when you permit the loving mother of your children to ask you, without apology, to f**k me like a w***e; but also, the unit used to measure space between two lovers who share a bed but no longer a heart. It is what the orphan could teach you about the sanctity of family; as much as saving the life of the woman who married your ex, also could. Or the woman who lost her child, blaming the one who decided not to give birth.
It is what I think you meant when you said, “if only… I had met you 10 year earlier.”
It is what my friend did not say to his mother in time. What we did not see in the mirror by Nagasaki’s reflected light that morning in August; and what those on the ground did see. It is my aunt walking into cancer’s battlefield, armed only with a can of sarcasm.
It is what you miss most when you are so far from the last place you called home; and what you see on those inevitable midnight walks when no place or person or building has ever been home. It is the stranger at your table, and the thief in your family; and that knowing look when you are trapped in a meeting and you see the face of the only other person there who understands you. It is the guilt of being joyful while others are still suffering.
It is that last fence standing after a century of wind and waves had their say.
Poetry is the sum total of all things raw and tender, and more, that I have ever wanted to, but could not, say, to anyone, including you, to and about and for, you. These are all things I do not think she, living in a house made of straight protected and committee-approved lines and desires, can comprehend today. This is how poetry has always invaded the houses of those who are already dead.
for Francisco and Nelton, my muses today
© 2017 Marie AnzaloneAuthor's Note
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Added on February 2, 2017Last Updated on March 20, 2017 AuthorMarie AnzaloneXecaracoj, Quetzaltenango, GuatemalaAboutBilingual (English and Spanish) poet, essayist, novelist, grant writer, editor, and technical writer working in Central America. "A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to ta.. more..Writing
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