Things in Light, the self-proclaimed nuevomexicano arts & culture blog with the mostest, is psyched to feature Brian Hendrickson's work in our 2015 poetry series. Already an award-winning poet, Hendrickson is currently engaged in postdoctoral studies in rhetoric and writing at UNM. He is passionate about the role that writing plays in activism and social movements. His debut book of poems, Of Small Children / And Other Poor Swimmers, was recently published by Swimming with Elephants. Today on TIL, we proudly present one poem from Of Small Children and three as-yet-unpublished works.
Because
Because you can’t just shoot
every last thieving politician in the back of the head;
Because it’s illegal, sure—but
also because they’d probably just grow new heads;
Because when you told her you
sometimes wished you had the balls to do this, some small bird
escaped from the delicate cage of her voice, and she stopped asking
you if all the dark hair in your poems belonged to her;
Because regardless, a busload of
vacationing mechanics disappears in Acapulco;
Because regardless, a Jewish
settler in a Subaru runs down two Palestinian boys for throwing
stones;
Because regardless, Hutu rebels
gang-rape nearly two hundred women and children over a four-day
period in the village of Luvungi—among the victims, three baby
boys;
Because sometimes you just
know—you know, and she knows, and they know—you all know you
know;
Because in the words of your
father, not a one of you may any longer be excused from the goddamn
table until you’ve finished all your goddamn vegetables;
Because she no longer calls you,
yet you still have something to say;
Your poems like your wishes still
carry her dark hair in one hand, and in the other, a gun.
Calling
All Psychopomps
The
reapers of tongues are harvesting all
The
daylight you ever tasted—you whose words
You
fished from brighter bodies than the sun—
Who
have lowered your crane bags into rivers
Dark
as a stranger’s history only to hoist them
Brimming
with stars—who know the precise
Glint
of each vowel your fathers gutted,
Each
consonantal ripple in your mothers’
Twirling
dresses. Once. Watch out. The engineers
Of
tongues are rerouting the blood your children
Read
to know what’s hidden below the labels
Stitched
across their skins. Soon yours
Will
be the story the scribes of tongues
Forget
to anthologize. Soon you will not
Even
recognize the wings on your own heels.
Hence
of you there are those who will be drawn
Out
ever onto rickety protrusions of rust
And
splintered wood sagging low where cattails
Give
to current, which is nothing if not what you were
Taught
to share with otherwise intransitive
Phases
of the moon. Only will you then hone subtler
Demonstrations
reminding, Check your pockets
For
what you have perhaps forgotten you
Have
that shines. When thereafter the butchers of tongues
Come
glinting for your crane bag, you’ll best know
How
to gesture. Gesture in every direction at once.
If
the Missing Appear in Dreams: A Partial Response to Theodore Roethke
I
hear a sound at night. I wake up.
I
look through the window and there is nothing.
– “Chechnya's
long wait for the disappeared
to
return,” BBC News, 16 July 2011
If
the missing appear in dreams they are not dead,
Chechens
say. Oil-dipped, one
wick-end sleeps,
So
feeds the fire burning in its head.
The
day is a cadaver. Go to bed
Where
life is more than your imagination leaks.
When
the missing flood our dreams they are not dead.
Forget
the lowly worm. Its curse. No messages embed
The
corkscrew tunnel that it creeps.
You’ll
find no fire burning in that head.
Whereas
we wake, then bring ourselves to say what must be said:
The
secret told us by the company sleep keeps:
Because
the missing speak our dreams they are not dead.
Last
night my friends all came for dinner, bringing bread
That,
broken, cried out like baby birds. The cheeps
Still
glow like dying embers in my head.
This
wick is braded from our wishes, intended
To
reach the basin of a common lamp full and deep
Enough
to feed forever fires in our heads.
To
gather the missing to this dream. To raise the dead.
Essay
—After
Hayden Carruth
.
. . all these poems over the years
have
been necessary – suitable and correct.
From
cruelty, injustice, already so
Many
unflinching poems.
Jeffers’
purse seine, Jarrell’s
Ball-turret
gunner, Baraka’s black
Fists
black daggers black teeth.
Forché’s
colonel. Rich’s wreck.
Rocewicz’s
old polish woman with
Her
pitiful goat forever casting us
Terrible
for doubting, or worse:
Forgetting,
occupied as we are
Wearing
masks: adult, cynical, though
Nevertheless
whittled with words honed on
The
whetstone of an adolescent urge
Refusing
suffering, unreason—someone
Else’s;
our own—punk songs
To
which we can no longer sing
Along
with abandon. All swimming
Begins
with the same flailing and gurgling.
How
I am guilty of such brash,
Incognizant
anthems. Pound proclaimed
Most
important poetry written after thirty—
The
adult mind attuned to irresolution.
Then
there is this: the books beginning to
Vanish
from their shelves again, this time
In
Tucson, where the superintendent
Prefers
stories a particular kind
Of
uncomplicated, and suddenly giving
The
lie requires we offer our younger selves—
That
of us still impertinent to complex
Ethical
nuance—this truce: one archetypal
Image
to embody: expelled student
Shrouded
in the smoke of stolen
Fire
and graffiti, head and hands forever
Empty
of approved lesson plans,
Backpack
perennially full of the knife-
Edged
line breaks of every poem
Worth
banning—Loki, Ananse,
Kitsune,
Coyote, Kokopelli
Castrated
no longer: god
And
goddess at once, shape-shifter,
Ageless,
unpredictable, endlessly
Dangerous—trickster,
trickster
Whom
we all once were,
Whom
we all have been
Summoned
upon to remember
How
to summon once again.
****
Brian Hendrickson’s first book of poems, Of Small Children / And Other Poor Swimmers, is available now through Swimming with Elephants Publications. Brian's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in a range of publications, including Indiana Review, North Carolina Literary Review, and New York Quarterly. For his poetry Brian has been nominated for a 2011 Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net award, recognized as a 2013 finalist for Smartish Pace’s Erskine J. Poetry Prize, and awarded a 2013 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for appearing in Beatlick Press’ La Llarona anthology. Since earning an MFA in Creative Writing and Literary Arts from the University of Alaska Anchorage, Brian has taught and tutored writing at colleges and correctional facilities in Alaska, Florida, North Carolina, and now New Mexico, where he is currently pursuing a PhD in Rhetoric and Writing. Brian’s scholarship focuses on the role of writing in social movements and student activism.
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