Poetry Section

Poetry

Poetry Section Contents

Suheir Hammad, “a prayer band”

Thomas Sayers Ellis, “Groovallegiance”

Lorraine Healy, “Where They Were”

Stephen Paul Miller, from “I’m Trying to Get My Phony  Baloney Ideas about Metamodernism into a Poem”

 

SUHEIR HAMMAD

a prayer band

every thing

you ever paid for

you ever worked on

you ever received

every thing

you ever gave away

you ever held on to

you ever forgot about

every single thing is one

of every single thing and all

things are gone

every thing i can think to do

to say i feel

is buoyant

every thing is below water

every thing is eroding

every thing is hungry

there is no thing to eat

there is water every where

and there is no thing clean to drink

the children aren’t talking

the nurses have stopped believing

anyone is coming for us

the parish fire chief will never again tell anyone that help is coming

now is the time of rags

now is the indigo of loss

now is the need for cavalry

new orleans

i fell in love with your fine ass   poor boys   sweating   frying catfish   blackened life   thick women   glossy   seasoning   bourbon   indians   beads   grit   history of races

and losers who still won

new orleans

i dreamt of living   lush   within your shuttered eyes

a closet of yellow dresses   a breeze on my neck

writing poems for do right men and a daughter of refugees

i have known of displacement

and the tides pulling every thing

that could not be carried within

and some of that too

a jamaican man sings

those who can afford to run will run

what about those who can’t

they will have to stay

end of the month tropical depression turned storm

someone whose beloved has drowned

knows what water can do

what water will do to once animated things

a new orleans man pleads

we have to steal from each other to eat

another   gun in hand   says we will protect what we have

what belongs to us

i have known of fleeing desperate

with children on hips in arms on backs

of house keys strung on necks

of water weighed shoes

disintegrated official papers

leases   certificates   births   deaths   taxes

i have known of high ways which lead nowhere

of aches in teeth   in heads   in hands tied

i have known of women raped by strangers   by neighbors

of a hunger in human

i have known of promises to return

to where you come from

but first any bus   going any where

tonight the tigris and the mississippi moan

for each other as sisters

full of unnatural things

flooded with predators and prayers

all language bankrupt

how long before hope begins to eat itself?

how many flags must be waved?

when does a man let go of his wife’s hand in order to hold his child?

who says this is not the america they know?

what america do they know?

were the poor people so poor they could not be seen?

were the black people so many they could not be counted?

this is not a charge

this is a conviction

if death levels us all

then life plays favorites

and life   it seems   is constructed

of budgets   contracts   deployments   of wards

and automobiles   of superstition  and tourism

and gasoline   but mostly insurance

and insurance   it seems   is only bought

and only with what cannot be carried within

and some of that too

a city of slave bricked streets

a city of chapel rooms

a city of haints

a crescent city

where will the jazz funeral be held?

when will the children talk?

tonight it is the dead

and dying who are left

and those who would rather not

promise themselves they will return

they will be there

after everything is gone

and when the saints come

marching like spring

to save us all

Suheir Hammad is the author of several books, including her latest

collection of poems, ZaatarDiva by Cypher (http://www.CypherBooks.com). She

is an original cast member and writer of Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam on Broadway. Her website is http://www.SuheirHammad.com.

THOMAS SAYERS ELLIS

Groovallegiance

 

for Michael Veal

A dream. A democracy. A savage liberty.

And yet another anthem and yet another heaven

and yet another party wants you.

Wants you wants you wants you.

Wants you to funk-a-pen funkapuss.

Wants you to anthologize then re-troop your group.

Wants you to recruit prune juice.

My peeps.

My poetics.

My feet.

All one.

All one.

All one, heel and toe.

My peeps.

My poetics.

My feet.

All one.

All one.

All one, lowly heel and toe.

Br’er feet and br’er beat repeatedly beaten.

Repeatedly beaten repeatedly beaten.

Br’er feet and br’er beat repeatedly beaten.

Repeatedly beaten repeatedly beaten repeatedly beaten.

Br’er feet and br’er beat repeatedly beaten.

Feet feet feet.

Every feet a foot and free, every feet a foot and free,

every feet a foot and free.

A foot and free.

Agony and defeat, a foot and free.

A foot and free.

Every feet a foot and free, every feet a foot and free,

every feet a foot and free.

A foot and free.

Agony and defeat, a foot and free.

Feet feet feet

Reverend feet, a foot and free.  Reverend feet,

Repeatedly beaten

Feet feet feet.

A million marchers.

Two parties.

One Washington.

One Washington.

Two parties.

A million marchers.

An afterparty.

An afterparty after marching.

The aftermarch.

An aftermarch-afterparty after marching

all the way to Washington.

Another march another party.

Another aftermarch after another afterparty.

After another afterparty after marching.

After another march afterpartying and after marching

all the way to Washington.

Always Washington always Washington.

Uncle Jam, enjambed

all the way to Washington.

After all that marching after all that partying.

Uncle Jam, enjambed.

Always Washington.

A million marchers.

Two parties.

One Washington.

One Washington.

Two parties.

A million marchers.

Footwork.

If feet work for page shouldn’t feet work

for stage, run-on.

Run-on platform.

Run-on floor,

run-on.

If feet work abroad shouldn’t feet work

at home, run-on.

Run blood, run-off.

From run flag.

From run bag,

run-on.

Run and tell it.

Run tell tag run tell toe, run tell, tell it.

De-decorate intelligence.

If so also de-decorate form. If so also de-decorate war,

run home.

In every war bloods leave and bloods bleed

and don’t come home. What for in every war,

what for, and don’t come home.

For war for war for war.

In every war bloods leave and bloods bleed

and don’t come home. What for in every war,

what for, and don’t come home.

For more for more for more.

That for, in every war.

That for, for every drug.

The war on drugs is a war on bloods,

run tell it.

A line is played. A section plays.

All up, into it, and involved, into it into it

and involved, all up into it and involved.

Footnote.

Take joke.

Take note to toes.

Clip note.

Go home.

Take note to foot.

Race note.

Footnote to feet.

Foot hurt.

Footnote to note.

Cite hurt.

Toe note to foot.

Bottoms up.

Sore foot to church.

Stop running.

If office, if oath.

Broken votes.

A line is played. A section plays.

A protest you press to test repeating itself.

A section plays. A line is played.

A protest you press to test repeating itself.

My peeps.

My poetics.

My feet.

Some ally.

Some enemy.

Mostly tradition.

The jive end.

Br’er rear.

Br’er rear end isms.

Pass out the words.

The kitty is not a toy.

Pass out the words.

The kitty is not a toy.

I owe roots and books to groundwork’s underground crosstalk

of African Telephone Churches.

All one all one all one, star-spangled funky.

An associate professor of English at Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, Ohio), Thomas Sayers Ellis is a coeditor of On the Verge: Emerging Poets and Artists (1993), and a contributing editor of the journal, Callaloo. His poem, “Groovallegiance,” appears in his recent book The Maverick Room (Graywolf Press, 2005, www.graywolfpress.org), and is reprinted here by permission of the author. He is currently compiling and editing Quotes Community: Notes for Black Poets.

Lorraine Healy

Where They Were

For Anne Marie Macari

They were in Sweden, in Paris.

In Mexico City. In Venezuela.

The thirty thousand, the however

many had not answered

the latest roll call.

So said the general. The colonels.

Some lieutenants. Even the few

cadets of the Army School I knew.

Gone to Denmark. To Barcelona.

Zipping through Rome in little

scooters. Sending postcards. Asking

their poor mothers for more money.

Who were the mothers in the Plaza?

Covering up for the gone.

Making a wretched, wretched noise.

I went from thirteen to eighteen

eating the white  sour bread of lie,

and the way we sang bland rock “n roll

quieted the whispers, kept us

light-blue and innocent.

They were in Lima, crowding Madrid,

smoking la frula of Amsterdam,

on the long solitary walk of exile;

alive but skinless with nostalgia,

alive and breathing the rare foreign air.

So said the majors. And the beautiful,

immaculate Navy cadets on deck,

and the police. The news anchormen

tut-tutting the rumors, patting their gilded

hair. Were they homesick, the gone?

And we awoke and were so heavy

with the black-green years. So much mud

to go through, sifting for little things,

an earring, one of the wrist bones, a name.

We had been celibate for the motherland.

There was such a roar instead of singing.

The news came from abroad in empty envelopes.

The full things were the ditches where

the gone were entwined and known only

to themselves and each tangled other.

The cadets wore royal blue crossed

with red silk sashes. They could dance.

Nobody knew how we had come to own

so much hatred. Nobody knew. Nobody.

Nunca supimos nada.

Lorraine Healy is an Argentinean poet and photographer living on Whidbey Island, Washington. She is the author of The Farthest South (New American Press, 2003, www.mainstreetrag.com/LHealy.html) and The Archipelago (Finishing Line Press, 2005).

STEPHEN PAUL MILLER

From “I’m Trying to Get

            My Phony Baloney Ideas  about

            Metamodernism into a Poem”

 

I forget

our SeaWorld

discounts.

“We save

30 or 40 dollars.”

“So what?”

objects

my 7-yr.-old son,

Noah.

“Money’s

a stupid little man

who makes you

buy things.”

Post-17th century

modernism

pushes what follows

like a vacuum cleaner

salesman

selling

one

more part,

says Bruno Latour.

We turn and

Noah calls

the highway-

a thin

valley between two

South Californian hills-

“a lowway.”

At the Delmar Hilton, we run into a new doctors’

convention

and I enjoy coffee in a china cup

“Can there be

an invention convention?” asks Noah from

the back seat on the way to SeaWorld.

Greeks say “postmodern.”

to describe

a style

after one

“of the moment,”

-as modern means-

but now

the postmodern

follows

World War II,

so say “post-World War II/modernism.”

Thank you!!!

World War II

globalizes America.

Postmodernism Americanizes

the world.

I’m not

so much

American as

similar to it.

That’s bull.

Noah sees me writing

“invention convention” and says

“anything you say can be a poem.”

Example?

Near three SeaWorld sprinklers

he reads Shamu the Whale’s

cartoon bubble: “Caution, Wet Area.”

In the bathroom Shamu says:

“Caution, Wet Floor.”

“Shamu really cares if

people slip,” jokes Noah. We soak in the sprinklers

though you never know

which sprinkler will squirt.

“We’re always naked,” says Noah,

“You have to grow clothes you can’t take off not to be….

Sprinklers are more enjoyable with shirts on….

Don’t throw away any

of your old T-shirts-

they might fit me.” I’m not so much American

as similar to it, the idea, I mean,

the reports tricking  people into coming to North America in the 1620’s

and Iraq in 2003. “I don’t see why they call it SeaWorld, where’s the sea? They should call it

WaterWorld. SeaWorld doesn’t sound good. I don’t

mean the music.I mean the word.”

The sound  system plays “Elephants on Parade.”

“Whatever happens to Dumbo’s mother?”

asks Noah, “I forget.”

“Dumbo gets a good job and uses his influence to

bust his mom from jail.” “Oh yeah,” he recalls,

“The stork makes a mistake and delivers

an African elephant with big ears

to an Asian mother.”….

On Ocean Beach I meet Risa, a

seventies friend of a friend,

now an Atlanta social worker vacationing

with her family.  Risa’s happy to see me.

“You haven’t changed at all: When I think “Steve

Miller,’ I think “borderline depressed.'”

Why are we in California anyway?

To me California means back to the Garden-

but more immediately I’m here  to cheer my son.

Risa tells me her sister has what my wife has

and her nephew Ray thinks Risa’s his mother.

On the highway, I point at a Red Lobster remind Noah

of how Mommy liked going there with us. He doesn’t

want to remember. To cheer him up, I tell the Risa and

Ray story. As we drive to lunch Eric Clapton’s  song to

his dead son plays. I tell Noah about it to make him feel

better, and it works. Noah is very critical of Clapton’s

son’s mother as we pass an intricate accident shaving

off a car’s front end. Feeling better, Noah enjoys

pancakes at a Denny’s where the bathroom door says

“MENS.” “It should be “M-E-N-apostrophe-S’ or

“M-A-N’S.’ Hey,” speculates Noah, Maybe, this is

THE MAN’S bathroom.” The urinal mat says  “Say

NO to Drugs.” “What does the toilet have to do

with it?” wonders Noah. “Do they want you to

throw your drugs in the toilet?” he asks. I phone

my LA friend Ken Deifik who says he forgot

how articulate the counterculture in Woodstock

is until seeing the new director’s cut. Whatever

the sixties is it melds natural and human

concerns unlike unions of “human” and

“natural” science

resembling Nazi laboratories and Utopias.

The modern is the nature/human split, says Latour, and

Latour  andLatour’s right: “We’ve never been modern,”

meaning modernism’s always an illusion-a dynamic

one we can see through but not escape-We’re meta-,

not post-, modern. The new contains all. We’re between

bad (e.g., Nazi) and good (e.g., sixties) people/nature

distanceless reunions. Noah plays in the playground sand

near the main La Jolla Beach. “Nice warm sand,” a kid

says. Ideally, California’s public space is everywhere-

even if it’s really nowhere. California should be one big

Woodstock. Okay, I know it’s maybe the apotheosis of

the suburb, the death of public space, and the

Enlightenment’s close, since public space enables

discourse-why suburbs (lacking much publicly owned

common space) and retro Enlightenment Nazis can

blur. But California can be intimate public space

where it’s easy to have Noah write my poetry, I

finally see  as Fahrenheit 911 makes you feel though

you thought you already felt.

I should settle for academia not killing me.

Proficide is a crime only recently named.

A downside of tenure is scarcity of senior hires,

tying profs to one plantation, so employers

have a cheap, stable work force

and can only fire professors

by slowly icing them.

The university can be one big

Florida election-overlooking or lying about evidence,

misinterpreting rules, stonewalling, not admitting error

so turning more and more wrong until it’s full blown

inhuman torture. Insensitivity turns brutal-they might

see it in Bush but think they’ve solid rationale that just

feels right, just as Neocons think they don’t need to make

sense because they’re cool. Sometimes I feel that way but it’s weird how my job sort of well…misused…well….They

put me through this amazing 14th Amendment-like role-

reversal-thing where they hit you with your best shot.

They think of it as using your weight against you-

flipping you-the way Bush v. Gore uses the right to

vote to take votes from African-Americans, again, like

Groundhog Day, you know, because Florida

has no uniform way to count votes, but then it stops it

from being corrected because never mind.

Similarly, the idea is for your protection

they can’t use past application descriptions,

assessments, and judgments of research and

publications against you so they say you can’t use

past research and publications at all and call

a book as past if you just thought of doing it five

years ago, no matter when it’s published,

thus disqualifying you

for their creative indiscretion.

And then when my wife gets sick,

the university human resources dept. backs

the college of conservative arts by denying

me a family leave because they

say my wife’s too sick

and needs care outside the home and hence I’m

not caring for her. Huh? It allows them to, as women

so often experience, wash their hands

of harmless special accommodation for dire needs

and screw up childcare

for the good reason

of them winning.

In another poem I’ll be more specific, I

guess, or, oh, forget it.

They’re just doing

what they’re supposed to do.

I shouldn’t take it so

personal[ly],

but focus instead on

eating pizza on the beach

with Noah

who asks me what I’m thinking.

I lie and substitute my last thought: “1968 and

what would have happened?” “Huh?”

The sun’s

setting in the Pacific

where Bobby Kennedy dies again.

How could he get out of Vietnam?

Johnson, McNamara

et al. already know you can’t win and

they’re not stupid.

But

losing

is off the charts.

To help Noah on a monkey bar

I take my eyes off the white sun

and miss the sunset

yet catch its pink tail.

We drive off

and see Mars and a crescent moon.

There’re no tall

buildings near

so the

ocean/light/sun/west

seem in the same sky

with the south/moon/Mars/night-

like side-by-side stage sets.

Kissinger says if we prolonged the Vietnam war

indefinitely.

the Russians would

have respected us, not gone into Afghanistan,

and presto

no 9/11! Don’t worry,

though. If the best we can do’s

eternal quagmire,

we lose one in Vietnam

to gain one in Iraq.

Noah whines and I tell him to use his

words.

He tells me to use my brains.

We all want credibility.

The problem is Kissinger wants credibility

on being God,

and Bush can’t wait to

spread good

government

when he doesn’t believe

in any government.

But Bobby Kennedy can and will end the war.

We won’t dwell on it

for as long as we actually do-I mean still are.

Noah and I take a long trip by feeling at home. When we fly home

we won’t go anywhere.

In the morning,

Noah builds a “castle-hole”

from a wall

he makes to protect him from water

when he notes the “hole”

can project upwards.

The kids copying him,

he says,

show they like him.

Four bathers pass.

“That’s awesome,” says one.

“You raised him well,”

a college-age woman

wearing a bikini tells me

in a Czech accent.

It’s lucky I get lost

going to the zoo

and stop

at wherever

this beach is.

One reason for a vacation is to be nowhere.

On the hotel radio

we hear about an “international sand castle contest,”

exciting Noah.

He says he wants to build a castle without being

judged,

though, at the very end, he wants to

win.

Noah tells the judges,

two thin middle-aged women writing on pads,

his castle has “special features.”

He alerts them to the charms

inside the castle: “a path to the roof”

and “a tunnel to a hollow room.”

They call all 20 or so (12 and under) kids

onto a stage facing away from the beach

but only acknowledge 3 winners,

leaving the other kids to droop off-stage.

Noah’s castle was the only one with formal integrity.

Though three-dimensional and partially hidden,

it’s of-a-piece

in terms of it sight lines and psychological space.

“The judges know I won,

they keep their judgments

on the inside when they should be outside.”

Then he clarifies

their apparent

incompetence:

“They’re too serious.”

Noah and I have collaborated

on a marvelously imperfect meta-vacation

made of grainy meta-thinking

and to celebrate

JetBlue pleasures us

with snacks,

no meal of course,

but supplement,

nothing but excess.

Blue feeds you like Social Security-

it’s best not to need it.

Bring it on,

they suggest,

and you can eat

watching TV.

There’s no movie

but everyone gets

a television and

their house flies.

Stephen Paul Miller is the author of four books of poetry, including Skinny Eighth Avenue (Marsh Hawk Press, 2005, www.marshhawkpress.org), from which this poem has been excerpted and reprinted by permission of the author. A professor of English at St. John’s University in New York City, Miller is also the author of The Seventies Now: Culture as Surveillance (Duke University Press) and coeditor of The Scene of My Selves: New Work on New York School Poets (University of Maine’s National Poetry Foundation).