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Poezija Savremena Strana
Poezija Savremena Strana
Poezija Savremena Strana
Claudia Rankine
There was a time I could say no one I knew well had died. This is not to suggest no one died.
When I was eight my mother became pregnant. She went to the hospital to give birth and
returned without the baby. Wheres the baby? we asked. Did she shrug? She was the kind of
woman who liked to shrug; deep within her was an everlasting shrug. That didnt seem like a
death. The years went by and people only died on televisionif they werent Black, they were
wearing black or were terminally ill. Then I returned home from school one day and saw my
father sitting on the steps of our home. He had a look that was unfamiliar; it was flooded, so
leaking. I climbed the steps as far away from him as I could get. He was breaking or broken. Or,
to be more precise, he looked to me like someone understanding his aloneness. Loneliness. His
mother was dead. Id never met her. It meant a trip back home for him. When he returned he
spoke neither about the airplane nor the funeral.
Every movie I saw while in the third grade compelled me to ask, Is he dead? Is she dead?
Because the characters often live against all odds it is the actors whose mortality concerned me.
If it were an old, black-and-white film, whoever was around would answer yes. Months later the
actor would show up on some latenight talk show to promote his latest efforts. I would turn and
sayone always turns to sayYou said he was dead. And the misinformed would claim, I never
said he was dead. Yes, you did. No, I didnt. Inevitably we get older; whoever is still with us
says, Stop asking me that.
Or one begins asking oneself that same question differently. Am I dead? Though this question at
no time explicitly translates into Should I be dead, eventually the suicide hotline is called. You
are, as usual, watching television, the eight-oclock movie, when a number flashes on the screen:
I-800-SUICIDE. You dial the number. Do you feel like killing yourself? the man on the other end
of the receiver asks. You tell him, I feel like I am already dead. When he makes no response you
add, I am in deaths position. He finally says, Dont believe what you are thinking and feeling.
Then he asks, Where do you live?
Fifteen minutes later the doorbell rings. You explain to the ambulance attendant that you had a
momentary lapse of happily. The noun, happiness, is a static state of some Platonic ideal you
know better than to pursue. Your modifying process had happily or unhappily experienced a
momentary pause. This kind of thing happens, perhaps is still happening. He shrugs and in turn
explains that you need to come quietly or he will have to restrain you. If he is forced to restrain
you, he will have to report that he is forced to restrain you. It is this simple: Resistance will only
make matters more difficult. Any resistance will only make matters worse. By law, I will have to
restrain you. His tone suggests that you should try to understand the difficulty in which he finds
himself. This is further disorienting. I am fine! Cant you see that! You climb into the ambulance
unassisted.
from Citizen: You are in the dark, in the car... Related Poem Content Details
BY CLAUDIA RANKINE
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00:2205:42Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume.
/
You are in the dark, in the car, watching the black-tarred street being swallowed by speed; he
tells you his dean is making him hire a person of color when there are so many great writers out
there.
You think maybe this is an experiment and you are being tested or retroactively insulted or you
have done something that communicates this is an okay conversation to be having.
Why do you feel okay saying this to me? You wish the light would turn red or a police siren
would go off so you could slam on the brakes, slam into the car ahead of you, be propelled
forward so quickly both your faces would suddenly be exposed to the wind.
As usual you drive straight through the moment with the expected backing off of what was
previously said. It is not only that confrontation is headache producing; it is also that you have a
destination that doesnt include acting like this moment isnt inhabitable, hasnt happened before,
and the before isnt part of the now as the night darkens and the time shortens between where we
are and where we are going.
/
When you arrive in your driveway and turn off the car, you remain behind the wheel another ten
minutes. You fear the night is being locked in and coded on a cellular level and want time to
function as a power wash. Sitting there staring at the closed garage door you are reminded that a
friend once told you there exists a medical termJohn Henryismfor people exposed to
stresses stemming from racism. They achieve themselves to death trying to dodge the build up of
erasure. Sherman James, the researcher who came up with the term, claimed the physiological
costs were high. You hope by sitting in silence you are bucking the trend.
When the stranger asks, Why do you care? you just stand there staring at him. He has just
referred to the boisterous teenagers in Starbucks as niggers. Hey, I am standing right here, you
responded, not necessarily expecting him to turn to you.
He is holding the lidded paper cup in one hand and a small paper bag in the other. They are just
being kids. Come on, no need to get all KKK on them, you say.
The people around you have turned away from their screens. The teenagers are on pause. There I
go? you ask, feeling irritation begin to rain down. Yes, and something about hearing yourself
repeating this strangers accusation in a voice usually reserved for your partner makes you smile.
A man knocked over her son in the subway. You feel your own body wince. Hes okay, but the
son of a bitch kept walking. She says she grabbed the strangers arm and told him to apologize: I
told him to look at the boy and apologize. And yes, you want it to stop, you want the black child
pushed to the ground to be seen, to be helped to his feet and be brushed off, not brushed off by
the person that did not see him, has never seen him, has perhaps never seen anyone who is not a
reflection of himself.
The beautiful thing is that a group of men began to stand behind me like a fleet of bodyguards,
she says, like newly found uncles and brothers.
The new therapist specializes in trauma counseling. You have only ever spoken on the phone.
Her house has a side gate that leads to a back entrance she uses for patients. You walk down a
path bordered on both sides with deer grass and rosemary to the gate, which turns out to be
locked.
At the front door the bell is a small round disc that you press firmly. When the door finally
opens, the woman standing there yells, at the top of her lungs, Get away from my house. What
are you doing in my yard?
Its as if a wounded Doberman pinscher or a German shepherd has gained the power of speech.
And though you back up a few steps, you manage to tell her you have an appointment. You have
an appointment? she spits back. Then she pauses. Everything pauses. Oh, she says, followed by,
oh, yes, thats right. I am sorry.
/
The Bad Old Days
Related Poem Content Details
BY KENNETH REXROTH
Katie Peterson, "The News" from Permission. Copyright 2013 by Katie Peterson. Reprinted
by permission of New Issues Press.
Source: Permission (New Issues Press, 2013)
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Believe, Believe
Related Poem Content Details
BY BOB KAUFMAN
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00:00
02:16
What thoughts I have of you tonight Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets
under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit
supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full
of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!and you, Garcia Lorca,
what were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in
the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price
bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in
my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting
artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does
your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights
out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in
driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have
when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood
watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?
Berkeley, 1955