Jeff McRae

December 23, 2023

“Jeopardy” by Jeff McRaePosted by

Jeff McRae

JEOPARDY

And so if, when we are old and have lost interest
in things scholarly, and the children are living lives of their own,
what if we become what we strive now so hard to avoid?
Comforted by routine, scheduled by television programs.

What is: the morning coffee you brewed for years while I slept?
Who is: the woman that suffered all my abuses?
What are: the conditions of indebtedness?
And if when we have long since ceased using our proper names,

or your medical condition has me speaking again to God,
who never crossed the threshold of our house, what is:
I will not die first? Who is: the one most likely to better bear
the remaining days? Perhaps we’ll know the beauty of one thing.

Perhaps we will be left with the gift of a breath. A storm is coming.
One need only feel the air to know what lies within
the corpse-colored clouds. When you are young
and certain of your place in the palpable mystery of being

you begin with knowing. Then forgetting begins: forgetting
where you left your glasses (on your head), forgetting
when we first met (in a cold month long ago), forgetting even
what grace felt like (it felt like privilege). It occurs to you

how gently the rain rolls through the deltas of sand on the sidewalk.
What is: an evening of opposites? Who is: the owner
of this lilac-scented drawer of clothes? What are: the brief songs
of crickets? When the world trusts you it will reveal itself

in the language of repetition, in the forked tongue of instinct and culture,
with a stale breath of history. Until then you must learn to live
with small amounts of starvation, with want, with a lengthening list
of valid questions for which you deserve no answer.

—from Rattle #23, Summer 2005

__________

Jeff McRae: “In junior high I copied a poem from a book and passed it off as my own to my mother, who promptly affixed it to the refrigerator. I wrote my first poem to keep the jig afoot. Growing up on a farm in Vermont, I became totally whacked-out on both kinds of nature: the Robert Frost and the James Harriot kinds, and happily remain so.”

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June 3, 2022

“Kurt Vonnegut Stepped Off the Plane” by Jeff McRaePosted by

Jeff McRae

KURT VONNEGUT STEPPED OFF THE PLANE

Sipped from his flask crossing the shoals and my girlfriend
drove him to campus. She was always involved with
 
something and I was involved with her, showed up
at the studio Sunday morning when she painted her post
 
modern trees, followed her to the African textiles show.
Stop trying to make yourself cry, she said when she
 
dumped me. Vonnegut followed her around for the afternoon.
She bought him ice cream with a couple dollars from
 
the student group petty cash. They speculated about the age
of the oak on the quad all while he accepted small mouthfuls
 
of praise. I broke out in hives. No poems—not mine
nor those of Wordsworth—were going to bring her back.
 
It was fucking over. Done. I didn’t have the chance
to play her the version of “Moon River” I’d worked up
 
for our hump day movie night. Vonnegut took the stage
in a stupor and rambled in and out of amplification,
 
from poetry to the art of fame. It was about becoming,
he explained at the end of his talk, trussing his dangling ideas,
 
taking everyone’s breath. Become a better person, he said.
Years passed. She wrote me an old fashioned letter.
 
I wrote back. We had three children. This morning
she told me the dog threw up on the rug last night.
 
I descended the stairs thinking even what you fling
far away, like some primitive weapon, returns.
 

—from Rattle #75, Spring 2022

__________

Jeff McRae: “I started to write poems because of the Murder, She Wrote intro. Now I write them because they’re important. Okay, they’re not important. Murder, She Wrote was important. The poems are a fun challenge that sometimes every once in a while result in greater understanding. Whose I have no idea.”

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November 11, 2016

“Performance Without Notes” by Jeff McRaePosted by

Jeff McRae

PERFORMANCE WITHOUT NOTES

We were abused by being
made to abuse one another:
who could stand longest
kicked in the crotch? Roll
in that dog shit. Which
arrow can you catch in
your teeth? Divide four
days of garbage by seven
fifth graders with Nantucket
baskets. We lost every time.
Bees snuggled in our soda.
Firecrackers did not dislodge
the beetle from the jellyroll
but after that there was no
telling jelly from jellied beetle.
We were not apprised
of the consequences of our rage
so that later when we went
under the stars and figured
probably god was bullshit
we couldn’t stop from bashing in
the first old man we saw.
A whole high school of girls
walked by in yoga pants.
A brief heaven. Then
a weeping toothless man
with one leg on crutches.
A sad heck. A question
of morality: we figured
he must have survived war,
not raped children. We ran,
we caught him just in time!
When the girls helped lift him
my fingers touched
the marvelous literature
of wrists and I could not escape
the feeling I had been inserted
into the heavy days
of childhood, soaking up
a carnage I was expected
to later turn into exercises.

—from Rattle #53, Fall 2016
Tribute to Adjuncts

__________

Jeff McRae: “I’ve been an adjunct for thirteen years. Being an adjunct gives me the flexibility to write and provides the uncertainty to make it feel necessary.”

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