Jimmy Pappas: “My Dad told me before he died about a creative idea he had to make ‘mythology cards.’ They would be like baseball cards. He would draw a figure from Greek mythology on one side, and on the back of the card would be a story about the drawing. I realized he was sharing with me an artistic dream of his that he could never do now. I promised him that I would finish my first book of poetry and get it published because that was my artistic dream. We all have in us this godlike desire to create.” (web)
Jimmy Pappas is the guest on episode #34 for the Rattlecast. Click here to watch live or archived!
“Man with Birds and Bread” by Erin MurphyPosted by Rattle
Erin Murphy
MAN WITH BIRDS AND BREAD
a cento
On the edges of the afternoon
we lie on the beach, gray waves
the only language,
the gun-gray curlings of salt-tongue.
A man slogs through the soft sand
with an expired loaf of bread.
Look how he kneels,
holding out his palms as if catching snow.
Seagulls peep like Erinyes wearing
white linen suits, sky-jockeying
into a swinging web of flying sound
on their parameter of hunger.
A cacophony of needs—
synonym for human, perhaps.
His home is an ocean away.
There / the moon hangs like a golden mango.
There / the beach is the wind’s body
flecked with violet
where the light, aflame,
used to hum in the siesta’s honey,
donde la luz zumbaba enardecida
en la miel de la siesta,
There / a song curls inside you,
songs of children, songs of birds,
cantos de niños y de aves.
All of a sudden:
a call, loud and mean, while flashes of light
rise just over the beach grass at our backs.
A four-wheeler.
Birds scatter
like fireworks on el Cuatro de Julio.
Hatred glosses
in the cave of the mouth—
a mouth as a cold wind.
Above, in the yellow sky, a phrase drifts
to us like smoke from distant fires.
The breeze isn’t silent.
Look how he kneels,
face toward the light,
a man who tilts his bread in the sun,
the bag of bones:
I am I am still here still here.
How bitter is the bread of bitterness.
If I burn the world around me—
el mundo que me rodea—
until it shines beautiful and brown,
how does one undrown?
Cento credits: John Hoffman, Pia Täavila-Borsheim, Erin Coughlin Hollowell, Linda Bierds, Peter Makuck, Rodney Jones, Dana Levin, Jennifer Foerster, Garrett Hongo, John Ciardi, Eva Alice Counsell, Reginald Shepherd, Julie Marie Wade, Michael Broder, Lola Ridge, Huascar Medina, Jonathan Wells, H.D., Olga Orozco (trans. from Spanish by Mary Crow), BrandonLee Cruz, Gabriela Mistral (trans. from Spanish by Ursula K. Le Guin), Juan Felipe Herrera, Lily Darling, Noelle Kocot, Ron Silliman, Emanual Xavier, Cynthia Hogue, Ellen Bass, Canisia Lubrin, Alexandra Peary, Marilyn Nelson, Myronn Hardy, Forrest Gander, Chase Berggrun, Joseph Fasano, Chim Sher Ting, Mahogany L. Browne, Khaled Mattawa, Ashley M. Jones, Niki Herd
Erin Murphy: “Whenever I visit the Outer Banks of North Carolina, I see a Latino man feeding seagulls on the beach after work. He speaks Spanish to the birds, gesturing with his hands for them to come down to eat. The birds seem to recognize him and swarm around him for bread. This week, I witnessed a vehicle speeding along the beach and coming dangerously close to the man. The driver and passenger were yelling at the man and pumping their fists. The birds dispersed. I don’t think it’s an accident that this happened the same week that Axios reported that Latino activists are concerned about increasing hate crimes against immigrants. I chose the cento form for this poem because the experience called for a multiplicity of voices.” (web)
Chris Anderson: “During the pandemic, I happened to watch a video about a flashmob in a shopping mall in Leeds, and it moved me so much I sat down and wrote the poem more or less in one fell swoop. Later, as I was polishing it, I realized that it was about poetry, too, as I guess every poem is underneath. We are all singing our arias in the mall, and we all want them to matter somehow, to make a difference, however briefly, even though we soon disappear, back into the crowd.” (web)
Christina Kallery: “I spent my childhood in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula where I learned the following: toads do not like dollhouses, snow pants are universally unflattering and Duran Duran will never, ever schedule a tour date in Marquette. Keats’ ‘Isabella; or, the Pot of Basil’ was the first poem that emotionally affected me. When I was sixteen, I came across it in an old, beat-up library book and literally wept when I got to the scene where Isabella’s lover’s ghost appears at her bed. I still haven’t entirely lost my Romantic sensibility—sometimes to my chagrin. I still love poems that resonate at an emotional level.” (web)
Jessica Lee: “‘What the Heart Does’ is indebted to my friend’s student, who really did tape Band-Aids across her heart and cheek, rub glue between her hands, and declare she was making a potion ‘to make no one you love leave you ever.’ For privacy, I decided to give the girl the pseudonym, Aila—the name I hoped to give my own daughter.” (web)
Sharon L. Charde: “My younger son died twenty years ago in a mysterious accident in Rome; my older son graduated from college a week after his funeral and left home to live his life. I knew I was not needed as a mother anymore, I had burned out in my job as a family therapist and that to survive, I had to return to my first love, writing poems. This love and practice has sustained me more than anything else since then. When people tell me that my poems have affected their lives in powerful ways, that I speak in an honest and clear voice, that my grief supports theirs, I want to keep on writing and I do.” (web)
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