Hannah V. Norman

March 12, 2019

“Echo” by Hannah V. NormanPosted by

Hannah V. Norman

ECHO

In those days,
The people didn’t speak.
They would shake hands
And then go about their day
Nodding and listening.
The only sound was their feet,
And the wind,
And they were lonely and happy.
There were few people then,
And they elected the president
By choosing from among those
Who refused the post.
The president did not do much,
Only once every year, they would
Say something, one thing,
And the people would think about this,
As they walked and worked and listened.
One year, they were all tired
Of the quiet, because even the trees
Said very little, and they decided
To begin speaking again.
They weren’t lonely now,
And the wind and trees still stayed,
Despite gloomy prophets foretelling
That speech would pollute the air,
Burn the forests.
And they gathered in the square loudly,
For the president had something to say,
Though now, so did everyone.
“You’ve lost something beautiful,”
The president said, but no one heard, for
Everyone was so unused to their voices
That they shouted their whispers.
“What’s that?” one said.
“Why, they said our voices are beautiful,” said one.
“And so they are,” echoed the rest.

—from Poets Respond
March 12, 2019

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Hannah V. Norman: “This isn’t really in response to a particular event, but was prompted by the title of an article: ‘The President Who Doesn’t Speak.’ I think, in many ways, today’s society is full of extremes, both positive and negative ones, so I find it interesting to write about them in a somewhat mythical, historical way, creating a story about how we got to where we are today.”

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August 30, 2018

“Grave of a Tourist Trap” by Hannah V. NormanPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, July 2018: Editor’s Choice

 

What Once Was by Bryan DeLae

Image: “What Once Was” by Bryan DeLae. “Grave of a Tourist Trap” was written by Hannah V. Norman for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, July 2018, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Hannah V. Norman

GRAVE OF A TOURIST TRAP

We visited the hotel
and it was a tombstone now.
We had stayed as
sunburnt sunglass laden
tourists when it was
beachside property,
and then it was swallowed by
the dunes and became a relic.
The tour guide made
up something about it
featuring a ballroom
and library—as if it was
a palace—but I laughed
because it had been a few decades
but I remembered the
ballroom had been
converted to storage and
single rooms. Things become
more glamorous when they
are relics, the palace the relic
of consumerism and sunburn,
the empty perfume relic of
her wilting like a flower, only
not so sweetly, the stack of papers
a relic of his devotion, the grey
half moons under his eyes and
the rivers bulging under his skin.
I think the manager still lives on the
top floor, and laughs to see us
trying to climb a wave of sand,
trying to convince ourselves that
the past was beautiful, simply
because it is
gone.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
July 2018, Editor’s Choice

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Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “Usually I’m drawn toward the more strange and surprising takes on an image—I like it when the poet finds some dimension of the artwork that I didn’t see myself. This wasn’t the case with ‘Grave of a Tourist Trap,’ which is a good representative of the consensus view: an apocalyptic future that can barely remember the past, extreme climate change expressed or implied. Several other poems even used the same trope of a group of tourists visiting the ruins. But Hannah V. Norman out-wrote them all, with vivid and precise details, an interesting turn in every indispensable line, and an ending that’s just so aphoristically true.”

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June 5, 2018

“Nine Surprising Things Worth More Than This Shimmering Metal” by Hannah V. NormanPosted by

Hannah V. Norman

NINE SURPRISING THINGS WORTH MORE THAN THIS SHIMMERING METAL

1) there was a saffron finch outside my window, though I thought there were none left here anymore, and it was  old, and its voice hoarse as if it caught a cold, and I felt we had a mutual understanding.

2) the birthday cake I made had little real vanilla, I suppose, but it was sweet, too sweet in my opinion, and my  toddler gleefully ate it without throwing it onto the floor.

3) the printer was advertised as unbreakable, but i stand in contradiction, because I fell, and it slid off the table in slow motion but still too fast for me to stop it, and ink dripped onto the tile, which is why I chose tile, not carpet.

4) the air was blistering as if personally offended, but the clouds collapsed and water cascaded down ferociously, as if it too was offended. I was not.

5) my daughter found a lump of quartz in the backyard, and I am sure she thinks it worth more than any precious metal, because it is pale rose and can be easily tucked away in the fold of her small hand.

6) the mangoes have ripened, which I know because my dogs were vaulting into the air to catch their sweet-fleshed prey, and their faces are strewn with golden juice.

7) i grabbed my normal pastry from the hole-in-the-wall bakery down the street and they gave me two because they had too many and they were going to go stale.

8) the hospital a block away smells like antiseptic and has only stainless steel in the way of metal, but on night shift I saw two patients sit up and talk to each other who before had only glared at the ceiling as if its ivory whitewash was keeping secrets from them.

9) there was a road accident this morning, five miles away, and everyone was fine but a twisted bumper and a broken silver necklace, but somehow nobody cared about the necklace anymore.

—from Poets Respond

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Hannah V. Norman: “In reaction to BBC article about nine things more valuable than silver.”

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