“WE GO/IN DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS/DOWN THE IMPERTURBABLE STREET”
Gwendolyn Brooks, from “An Aspect of Love, Alive in the Ice and Fire”
We sit under a hot light. “We”
sounds sly unless I go
into the particulars. What business do I have in
making wide claims? Different
muscles govern the directions
mouths move—chomping down
and grinding across, for instance. The
tongue insists on itself, imperturbable,
even when shunted aside, wrapped in street
widths of gauze, to jump away from fat teeth.
“THE FEELING OF REPELLING AN INVASION IN ORDER, ONE DAY, TO BE YOURSELF”
Dionne Brand, The Blue Clerk: Ars Poetica
I rarely beam from feeling
compliant. Of
course, pleasure comes from repelling
any kink in the scheme. An invasion
of arrows launch from small chariots, orderly
volleys from dull women. One day,
as we’re all hastening to rot, might
the worms tarry a moment, and let you be
yourself?
Jean is a professor of English and women’s studies at Vassar College. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Comparative Literature and Art History from Indiana University, a master’s degree in English and creative writing from Stanford University, and a PhD in English from the University of Virginia. She has attended the Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference and has been to the AWP on multiple occasions. Jean also enjoys drawing and frequent visits to her family back home in Indiana.