ObWi Poetry Slam #2. It’s Coming.

July. Past the Fourth. In school, it’s the long slow slide: past the pool, past camp, past the games of catch-the-firefly. When you get older (when I got older) there was the gathering threat of High School Football practice — the American kind — in the August heat with forty year olds who are still living a dream, and not a good one, and not too well. You don’t want to hit until you hit someone, good, and they fall down. That it’s not proper or right or mature or anything you’d want to be is part of the pleasure.

Boxing, I tried it once or twice. But I’m too slow and my swing goes wide round, a rounder to the place between the hair and the ear, not straight out with a snap. Not to the nose, like I know it should (but I can’t make my arms behave). It’s not the same. Not like football. I was terrified until the end, and then I started to terrorize others and the fun started. And then, too soon, it ended. Not too much as a surprise after you’ve been worn down a bit but, at eighteen, it was a bit of a shock.

The slam. Feels good; let’s replay it. It’s time to slam again. This Thursday at eight o’clock in the evening, please. It’s on. (So to speak.)

A taste of the last round follows. Trust me, you want to read them.

From Jim Henley of High Clearing:

Traditionally rhymed a-b-a-b,
the pantoum’s essence is its scaffolding.
Basically, our viewers want to see
disasters, no matter where they’re happening.

The pantoum’s essence is its scaffolding:
two unrelated subjects are discussed.
Disasters, no matter where they’re happening,
expose the contingency of what we trust.

Two unrelated subjects are discussed,
although, these days, the poet has more leeway.
Expose the contingency of what we trust:
gas mains, bridge, the stanchions of the Freeway.

Although these days the poet has more leeway
regarding form, not all can be in flux.
Gas mains, bridge, the stanchions of the Freeway —
I watched them pulling bodies from crushed trucks.

Regarding form: not all can be in flux.
Chaos and order must be reconciled.
I watched them pulling bodies from crushed trucks.
They sawed the mother’s corpse to save the child.

Chaos and order must be reconciled
in the pantoum, or any poetry.
They sawed the mother’s corpse. To save the child
they shored the rubble temporarily.

In the pantoum, or any poetry,
basically, the reader wants to see
the rubble shored up temporarily,
traditionally rhymed a-b-a-b.

* * * * * *

From Katherine, of here (I hope she’ll be back):

Spain, 2004
It is not the first time that
this has happened to you,
nor is it the first time
that it has happened since
that much-invoked date.

But it looks different in
a Western city, and it feels
different when the bombers
would cheerfully murder me
on my own morning commute.

I’ve never been to Madrid,
but I’ve seen these squares full
of flowers, this wax melted into
the sidewalk next to these flimsy
aluminum candle-holders.

I recognize these lines of people
waiting to donate blood, though
they know it’s too late to be
useful and more than the
Red Cross knows how to deal with.

I wonder if we will do these
things next time; whether blood
drives and votive candles speak
unknown, universal words of comfort
to Americans and Europeans,

or if we only react this way
when the attacks aren’t expected.
Did they build these makeshift
shrines in Jerusalem, once? Will we
always build them in New York?

* * * * *

If you quote or repost any of the prior slammers, please attribute them to the author.