POETRY MONDAY
Ross Gay
The poetry of Ross Gay has drawn much attention lately – and with good reason. His poems, mostly in the lyric narrative mode, are striking in their energy and compassion.
Born in Ohio, he grew up outside of Philadelphia and has a Ph.D. in American Literature from Temple University. A painter and basketball coach as well as a poet, he teaches at Indiana University and in the new, low-residency MFA program founded by Gerald Stern at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey.
Here, for reading on our first September Monday, are three poems by Ross Gay. The first, “Season of Dreams,” is a new, unpublished poem he selected personally for our readers. The other two are from a book I can’t recommend highly enough, Against Which, published by CavanKerry Press.
Irene Willis
Poetry Editor
THREE POEMS BY ROSS GAY
The Season of Dreams
When the cold calls you brother
And the sweet of anything is something someone,
whose name you can’t recall,
read to you from a novel set in another century.
You’ve not looked another person in the eyes
in months, but could recite every cinder’s name
flitting the parched wood of your mind.
Even your best friend, the dog next door,
quaking with wisps of frost clinging to his bony flanks,
looks through the chain links as if to say,
Please don’t tell me.
How To Fall in Love With Your Father
Put your hands beneath his armpits, bend your knees,
wait for the clasp of his thinning arms, the best lock
cheek to cheek. Move slow. Do not, right now,
recall the shapes he traced yesterday
on your back, moments before being wheeled to surgery.
Do not pretend the anxious calligraphy of touch
was sign beyond some unspeakable animal stammer. Do not
go back further into the landscape of silence you both
tended, with body and breath, until it nearly obscured all
but the genetic gravity between you.
And do not imagine wind now blowing that landscape
into a river which spills into a sea. Because it doesn’t.
That’s not in this love poem. In this love poem
the son trains himself on the task at hand,
which is simple, which is, finally, the only task
he has ever had, which is lifting
the father to his feet.
from Against Which (CavanKerry Press, 2006)
Broken Mania
This is not a joke
when I wrap my hand tight
around the drunk man’s throat,
the drunk who heaves his girlfriend
around the Chevy, while she begs
no and please and the pub’s other drunk men
won’t be bothered because the Flyers play
the Red Wings in game 2 for the cup.
This, Drunk Man, is not a joke, and when
I left my pal’s house for some hot tea
at 7-11 I did not know that we would meet,
but meet we did, intimates we have become, I would say,
what with that gurgling noise slurping
about in your throat. And your girlfriend clutches my
arm, wide-eyed and sad, not sure for whom
she roots, but she knows her duty, where
she sleeps. This is not a joke,
Drunk Man. If the time and place
were right, you would have been dead, your tongue
yanked out and nailed to your forehead, but the time
was not right, bouncers tore me from you,
and I was wearing bear slippers, big, furry,
with soft claws. Maybe
I was too self-conscious to finish the job.
Maybe it was my friend at my side,
just released from a funny farm for a psychotic
episode, whispering and quaking. That’s enough,
that’s enough. You did not
know this about me, or my friend, did not
know the previous day his hand dug
hard into my shoulder from the car’s back
seat as we approached another hospital, pleading
Please don’t let them
do this to me. Don’t do
this to me. That he hasn’t
slept in five days and is wired, told me
things I can’t repeat for fear of my tongue
turning black rot and infecting my brain,
that it has nothing to do with samaritanism, the woman,
or humanity, this, Drunk Man, is about me,
about me shrinking your universe
around your throat like a noose, showing you that
to you, at this second, I am God,
and until my friend’s mania is broke
my arm melts rocks and is a machine
for murder.
from Against Which (CavanKerry Press, 2006)