Shhhhh….don’t say it too loudly, but I think I’ve actually just caught up with Poets & Writers Magazine’s weekly prompt series, The Time is Now. Let’s hurry up and get to it before they send me an email with yet another prompt.
Ahem. CLEARLY I wrote that several weeks ago (when I thought I was going to actually catch up) and then promptly traipsed off in the direction of spring break and forgot all about it. Nonetheless, poetry marches on. Here’s the prompt from March 7th:
If you read, in order, the last word of each line in Terrance Hayes’s poem “The Golden Shovel,” you would find them to be the words of Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem “We Real Cool,” the inspiration for Hayes’s poem. Select one or more lines from a poem you admire, and write your own “Golden Shovel” poem. Use each word from the source text in its original order for the last word in each line of your new poem. When you are finished, the end-words of your poem should trace out the origin poem. Be sure to add a note crediting the poet whose line(s) you’ve used. Browse through more Brooks-inspired poems in The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks (University of Arkansas Press, 2017).
I chose Sharon Olds’ “The Pope’s Penis” for my inspiration. Here’s the first and only draft:
THE GOLDEN SHOVEL
–with thanks to Sharon Olds and “The Pope’s Penis”
When the only other choice is to cry, I say laugh at it,
laugh, despite the notion that life itself hangs
in the balance. The doctor says cancer, so dig deep,
breathe through the catch and laugh right in
his face, his serious, did-you-hear-me face, his
tumor-the-size-of-an-egg face while he disrobes
you, though fully clothed. Penises have always been a
source of pain. My husband’s ego was so delicate
he had to stick his in every willing vagina, like a clapper
in a bell waiting to be gonged. I imagine they laughed at
my silly ignorance: denial become achievement. The
way I managed to keep my head held up, my center
from collapsing in on itself is truly a miracle of
epic proportions. It’s what we do. There is a
kind of reservoir in we women, an inverted bell
brimming with courage or stupidity, (who can tell it
apart?) that keeps our feet on the ground, that moves
our arms and legs, plasters a smile across our faces when
the shit hits the fan, when our breathing stops, when he
says words like affair or cancer. Somehow, the mind moves
to details: call a therapist, call a doctor, call a friend, a
god? Let’s not bring God into this, his holiness is ghostly
in this hour of need, besides, he never brought me a fish
though I was starving and alone, my heart shattered in
a million tiny slivers. Of course, we know it’s not always a
diagnosis or confession. One time it was a man with a halo
encircling his brow, machines beeping in a bed made of
hospital grade cotton and regret, not even 30 pieces of silver
for a death that threatened to drown me, decisions like seaweed
strangling a wrist, an ankle, pulling me deeper into the
sea’s bed. Back then I ran my fingers through his hair,
told the doctors to turn off machines and left, swaying
in the pull of a tide that would surround me and take you in
pieces, bit by bit, out to sea. Today, we discuss the
daily report: he’s pissing blood again, the days are so dark
though spring threatens, I ate a pan of brownies and
we laugh, because what else is there to do? We know the
drill, or so we claim, and change the subject to the heat
down here in Texas where I live, where I am, and
where you are not. I remember, after the affair, you at
home, on the phone with me night after night:
I broke in front of you, disintegrating pixels on a screen, while
you sat and bore witness. I imagine you watching his
deep and labored breathing, the heavy flutter of his eyes,
that hard wall that surrounds your heart so you can sleep,
so you can stand under the weight of it, the weight of it
all. There’s no way around bringing God into it. He stands
spectral, where I want to stand: next to you, holding you up.
More than a thousand miles away, I watch you lean in,
take strength from a secret well and offer praise,
making me think of what’s between us, think of
men and laughter and the ever present shroud of God.