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* strangering the everyday with jamaal may

José Angel Araguz Leave a comment

Reading Jamaal May’s Hum this week, I found much to admire – he works out not one but two solid sestinas and a pantoum as well as some versatile lyrical free verse throughout. What moved me most is his ability to move each poem beyond formal concerns and invest it with some emotional weight and insight.

The poem below is a great example of what I mean. May uses the elasticity of the word “If” to draw out as many facets of a couple of everyday objects as he can. When he leaves the reader with the image of a plastic bag at the end, he does so in such a way as to draw out something new from a familiar image.

* getting carried away *

* getting carried away *

 

If They Hand Your Remains to Your Sister
in a Chinese Takeout Box — Jamaal May

If an urn won’t do because ceramics
are not biodegradable and you need your ashes
buried in the plot next to your estranged wife
where you can help her feed the worms,
nurture soil, and lift trees into the sky —

If your obit is scrawled on notebook paper,
ripped out and photocopied,
rigid edges and all, and lines still show up
faint like soap scum collected
on a mirror above the motel sink
you were found slumped beneath —

If they hand your remains to your sister
in a Chinese takeout box, give thanks
for the giggling of your niece and give thanks
for this moment when, after tearing
a liquor-stenched wound down the middle
of this family, it for once won’t be mentioned

as they gather. Take solace that the plastic bag
carrying you to the cemetery will,
instead of joining you underground,
spend decades holding hands with a breeze
wandering around some landfill somewhere
repeating in bold red font,

THANK YOU
THANK YOU
THANK YOU
THANK YOU
THANK YOU

***

Happy thanking!

Jose

* finding work with Rhina P. Espaillat

José Angel Araguz 3 Comments

Last week I had the honor of participating in CantoMundo, a three-day retreat that develops, sustains, and supports a diverse community of Latina/o poets.

Being an introvert, I was a bit apprehensive of jumping into such a social gathering, my main concern being: What if they don’t like me? (I’m surprised by how much one remains in the sandbox no matter how old one gets).

* scared poet is scared *

* scared poet is scared *

Fortunately, the whole crew, including keynote speaker Sherwin Bitsui and Master Poets Lorna Dee Cervantes and Rafael Campo, were warm and welcoming. By the second night, this happened:

* scared poet is (a little less) scared *

* scared poet is (a little less) scared *

During Rafael Campo’s workshop, I was delighted to be introduced to the work of Rhina P. Espaillat.

The poem below belongs to the tradition of Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays,” a poem honoring the hard work of family. Espaillat’s masterful attention to the tension to be generated between narrative and measure really help drive home the heart of the poem.

The last two lines especially captivated me.

Both lines are five beats each, but note how much work the commas do: in the second to last line, three beats are held in place by a comma, then two more follow also held back, then the line break takes us into the next line where the first beat is reined in by another comma – all of this building tension (3-2/1-4 beat breakdown, respectively) allows the last phrase of the poem to really be sunk into while reading, the four beats driving home in rhythm what the words drive home in meaning.

**

“Find Work” – Rhina P. Espaillat

 

I tie my Hat — I crease my Shawl —
Life’s little duties do — precisely
As the very least
Were infinite — to me —

 

— Emily Dickinson, #443

 

My mother’s mother, widowed very young
of her first love, and of that love’s first fruit,
moved through her father’s farm , her country tongue
and country heart anaesthetized and mute
with labor. So her kind was taught to do —
“Find work,” she would reply to every grief —
and her one dictum, whether false or true,
tolled heavy with her passionate belief.
Widowed again, with children, in her prime,
she spoke so little it was hard to bear
so much composure, such a truce with time
spent in the lifelong practice of despair.
But I recall her floors, scrubbed white as bone,
her dishes, and how painfully they shone.

***

Happy finding!

Jose