Peg Duthie

January 24, 2019

“Substance” by Peg DuthiePosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, December 2018: Artist’s Choice

 

Untitled by Kari Gunter-Seymour

Image: “Untitled” by Kari Gunter-Seymour. “Substance” was written by Peg Duthie for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, December 2018, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Peg Duthie

SUBSTANCE

I blame the malevolent fairy
tales where the princess
always presents a creamy complexion—
porcelain, silk, satin, dewy
as unblemished petals—bah.
And fie on fathoming witches through
the coarse-and-homely-as-cartons pelts
of women earning their crow’s feet,
scaring thieves away without straw men.
The muscle and mastery needed to stir
sludge into sustenance, and then to scrub
the kettle clean enough for brewing cures—
why is it when boys play with powerful
powders and brines, it’s honored as chemistry
rather than cooed at as cookery
or cursed as conjuring? This is not
the province of unformed chicks.
Let me show you
a shape of a happy ending:
not the visage of a white washed egg
but the graying angles and curves
of a tested cradle,
the invisible hands
that clean up whatever’s after.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
December 2018, Artist’s Choice

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Comment from the artist, Kari Gunter-Seymour: “Full disclosure: I was secretly hoping for a poem that was not so obviously about an egg or the carton, or for that matter a womb or chicken. Maybe a poem that discussed texture or extremes of angle and light, as those topics often come up in conversation about this image at exhibitions. A poem that was not above roaming beyond the edges of the photograph. ‘Substance’ does all that. It dances me in and out of the frame, asks the timeless question, discusses each element so cleverly ‘a creamy complexion—,’ ‘the coarse-and-homely,’ the ‘graying angles and curves’ and lands so solid ‘… a tested cradle/ the invisible hands …’ I could go on and on. Brava!”

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August 6, 2018

“Decorating a Cake While Listening to Tennis” by Peg DuthiePosted by

Peg Duthie

DECORATING A CAKE WHILE LISTENING TO TENNIS

The commentator’s rabbiting on and on
about how it’s so easy for Roger, resentment
thick as butter still in a box. Yet word
from those who’ve done their homework
is how the man loves to train—how much
he relishes putting in the hours
just as magicians shuffle card after card,
countless to mere humans
but carefully all accounted for.
At hearing “luck” again, I stop
until my hands relax their clutch
on the cone from which a dozen more
peonies are to materialize. I make it look easy
to grow a garden on top of a sheet
of fondant, and that’s how it should appear:
as natural and as meant-to-be
as the spin of a ball from the sweetest spot
of a racquet whisked through the air like a wand.

—from Rattle #60, Summer 2018
Tribute to Athlete Poets

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Peg Duthie: “In high school, I reached the state cross-country meet; my trophies share a shelf with my Jane Austen action figure and my Loch Ness Monster caddy. These days I prefer to be on or in water, primarily as a paddleboarder; I’ve also covered tournaments for Tennis Buzz, and I spend more time on horse handicapping and fantasy tennis than I care to reckon up. As an introvert, I’m grateful to sports for opening conversational windows: being able to chat about gear, games, and moves has carried me through coffee breaks, lunch hours, cocktail parties, and business flights. And through those windows come both air and weight, which both clarify and complicate what I can write about.” (web)

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February 14, 2016

“Look at That, You Son of a Bitch” by Peg DuthiePosted by

Peg Duthie

“LOOK AT THAT, YOU SON OF A BITCH”

In the world I want to believe in, we would greet
hard truths with the gentleness born of water
long gone under the bridge, milk wrung out
of mops whose grey-clean strands
also soaked up the tearfalls slicking
the hay and slopping the mud against
our came-by-their-age-honestly boots. Meanwhile
the moon, which our schoolteachers said
didn’t have water, turns out to have plenty,
albeit not yet potable. That won’t help the folks in Flint
all but screaming to be heard
so many months about their tainted water. Fire
speaks louder than ice or poison. Fire
beats scissors and paper, but rock-
hard facts will sometimes outlast fire
and the love of lucre feeding it. Mind, science
is not a synonym for truth, but science
will soak the o-rings into icy water
after the shuttle burst into flames.
Will drag the jugs of yellowed water
across the miles and into the halls
of prosecutors and presidents. Will dream
of hopping across the ice-pocked floor
of nearby moons, and coming back to tell
not you all of all, but just enough to ignite
a fury fit to rinse out stables—just enough
to stagger you with its shiningness,
this world I have seen and want you to save.

—Poets Respond
February 14, 2016

[download audio]

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Peg Duthie: “Last week my newsfeed included tributes to astronaut Edgar Mitchell and a report on the Virginia Tech scientists who have been testing the water in Flint and whose faculty adviser has a history of battling authorities dismissive of lead contamination. Mitchell’s statement about wanting to drag politicians into space (the better to order the s.o.b.s to behold the earth) is the kind of sentiment I can simultaneously admire and disagree with: these days, it seems like such a tall order to get most politicians to look at anything other than their own self-interests. And then I read about Flint residents hugging Tech researchers and tears were in my eyes.” (website)

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