Sonia Greenfield

April 17, 2016

“From Nigeria to New Zealand” by Sonia GreenfieldPosted by

Sonia Greenfield

FROM NIGERIA TO NEW ZEALAND

So men with Kalashnikovs
red eyes and hand-rolled
cigarettes strap bombs under

the veils of girls as young as eight,
send them into the center of town.
Detonate. But those girls, their

girl faces, girl knees, and girl
dreams wasted are not mine
to plug into a poem about disgust

here on the coast of California
where I lick and lick and lick
the paws of my poet sadness.

Instead, consider the octopus
who escaped the ugly nubs
of human noses pressed to his tank

and the pits of their pink mouths
against his glass. He’s mine.
Under ink cloak of night, lid off,

slime coat pulled close over all
eight flowing shoulders, down
the drain he split. Fuck

this noise, he said, to canned
clams and human cruelties
before suckering out to sea.

—Poets Respond
April 17, 2016

[download audio]

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Sonia Greenfield: “I wanted to write about these young girls being blown up, because poetry is how I try to work through hurtful things that confound me. I’m a mother, and my mind goes to a dark place when I consider the basest level of human cruelty as it relates to children. But I also don’t feel that these tragedies belong to me, a white woman living in a coastal town of California, remote from what has been unfolding in Nigeria and neighboring Cameroon. What do I know of them? To get the details right, I would have to go there—if not physically, then at least metaphorically—which means combing through images to approximate a reality of which I have little insight, and besides being afraid of what I might see, it feels like too much appropriation. But Inky the octopus, on the other hand, I can tell his story. After all, it’s about escaping the human realm, which, in light of our follies, seems like a pretty smart move. Well-played, Inky.” (website)

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September 14, 2014

“A Spokesperson Said Thoughts and Prayers Go Out” by Sonia GreenfieldPosted by

Sonia Greenfield

A SPOKESPERSON SAID THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS GO OUT

Out like what? Whispers
in a tin can tied with yarn
a thousand miles long
to the can of a woman, her
ear desperately pressed
to its emptiness? Like a loon’s
song transmitted by Morse?
Can you fathom the miles
of murky ocean that whale
must sing through? Did you know
some people believe
all sounds ever made
are still present, hovering
like butterflies? Even, say, the whir
of a copy machine out there
in the ether, sent flying
when the first plane hit? Do you see
voices as monarch wings
wheeling through the sky?
If you shout from the window
of a thousand-foot tower
before you fall, where does
that scrap of voice go? Is it still
falling? You mean go out
like candles snuffed by the wind?
You mean out like empathy
in tiny increments marching
like ants made of sound
across the wires of the world?
Did she just hear an Our Father
whiz past? I’m sorry, I’m sorry,
she said. I think you’re
breaking up.

—from Poets Respond
September 14, 2014

__________

Sonia Greenfield: “This poem is in response to the ongoing statements between Stephen Sotloff’s family and the White House, but it is also a response to the pat use of this phrase, which I heard uttered on CNN on the 13th anniversary of 9/11. Mostly it’s about the inadequacy of platitudes to soothe those who are grieving as a result of tragedy, and this week’s news seemed rife with it.” (web)

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August 24, 2014

“Corpse Flower” by Sonia GreenfieldPosted by

Sonia Greenfield

CORPSE FLOWER

In Memoriam James Foley

They’ve said that the jihadist
narrator spoke in an East London accent, that
the journalist in orange kneeled on the ground, that
he may have denounced America before
the knife met throat and cut back. I’ll never know
beyond what they’ve said on the radio
as I tune it to Morning Becomes Eclectic
meaning just music. In San Marino
after four years, the Titan Arum
is about to bloom, but you can call it
a corpse flower. I thought that it would look different,
the flower I mean. More like the enormous meaty
flowers of Borneo and less like a new monk stripping
away his purple robes, though they both
pollinate by flies drawn to the scent. Look
them up online. I won’t watch how the event
unfolds, yet I hold in my imagination
his mother’s hand hovering above the mouse,
cursor blinking over that play arrow, to say nothing
of its barbed end.

—Poets Respond
August 24, 2014

[download audio]

__________

Sonia Greenfield: “I’d like to think poetry can remind us that politics has a rich emotional life. Furthermore, whenever I think about the brutality of man, I inevitably think about the mothers.” (website)

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July 8, 2012

“Sago, West Virginia” by Sonia GreenfieldPosted by

Sonia Greenfield

SAGO, WEST VIRGINIA

The blast was
a rumble, rock cascade,
stone seal. The cave
was a pinpoint
of un-light, a hole,
whole. The wives
cried. The coal
a black ribbon pinned to
a lapel. The gas
was methane in a shaker,
a drunken slew. The lung
an inky sac that
wrapped a greater body
in a bag. The letters
said goodbye. The miners
pulled a curtain, prayed
a sinner’s prayer.
The lamp, a night light
as each crawled
into sleep. The survivor
made a baker’s
dozen. The twelve
no longer there.

—from Rattle #36, Winter 2011

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Sonia Greenfield: “Sometimes there are some tragedies that I can’t shake, and I try to work them out with words. Maybe it’s my own therapy. Maybe if I apply language, which is sensible, to that which seems senseless, I can make peace with the human condition. I’m not sure it’s working. Martin Toler, one of the miners, left a note that read: ‘Tell all I see them on the other side. It wasn’t bad. I just went to sleep.’ I hope every word of his note is true.” (link)

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