I still remember seeing C.D. Wright read at the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference in 1998. One of the poems she read included the excerpt below; my head is, I think, still spinning from it.
Everyone in their car needs love. Car love. Meat love. Money
love. Pass with care.Deepstep, Baby. Deepstep.
The boneman said he would take the blinded driver to the river. With
a mirror. And then what.The boneman said he would take the blinded into a darkened
room. And put a hot-herb poultice on their sightless face.Mellein for this mullein for that. We called it flannel.
Then leave them there.
The baby sister of the color photographer had a baby girl in the
hills. Born with scooped-out sockets in the head. Born near the
tracks they sprayed with Agent Orange. The railroad's denials,
ditto the army's.They would have been blue. The eyes. She did not have. Blue
as the chicory in yonder ditch.We see a little further now and a little further still
She said her lights would be on and they were
Groping around the sleeping house in our gowns
Peeping into the unseen
Beautiful things fill every vacancy
-- C.D. Wright.
National Poetry Month, which ends this week, is a silly concept. All year long, we should start our days with poems.
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