Craig Arnold, who went missing on the small volcanic island of Kuchinoerabujima, Japan, on April 30th, is also scheduled to appear in the Swallow Anthology of New American Poets. He was considered one of the finest poets of his generation, and he was certainly an electrifying performer of his poems. Here is a video of him reading “Asunder,” which appeared in Smartish Pace in April 2008.
Here is another poem from the forthcoming Swallow Anthology of New American Poets, by Dr. C. Dale Young:
“Torn” by C. Dale Young
There was the knife and the broken syringe
then the needle in my hand, the Tru-Cut
followed by the night-blue suture.
The wall behind registration listed a man
with his face open. Through the glass doors,
I saw the sky going blue to black as it had
24 hours earlier when I last stood there gazing off
into space, into the nothingness of that town.
Bat to the head. Knife to the face. They tore
down the boy in an alleyway, the broken syringe
skittering across the sidewalk. No concussion.
But the face torn open, the blood congealed
and crusted along his cheek. Stitch up the faggot
in bed 6 is all the ER doctor had said.
Queasy from the lack of sleep, I steadied
my hands as best as I could after cleaning up
the dried blood. There was the needle
and the night-blue suture trailing behind it.
There was the flesh torn and the skin open.
I sat there and threw stitch after stitch
trying to put him back together again.
When the tears ran down his face,
I prayed it was a result of my work
and not the work of the men in the alley.
Even though I knew there were others to be seen,
I sat there and slowly threw each stitch.
There were always others to be seen. There was
always the bat and the knife. I said nothing,
and the tears kept welling in his eyes.
And even though I was told to be “quick and dirty,”
told to spend less than 20 minutes, I sat there
for over an hour closing the wound so that each edge
met its opposing match. I wanted him
to be beautiful again. Stitch up the faggot in bed 6.
Each suture thrown reminded me I would never be safe
in that town. There would always be the bat
and the knife, always a fool willing to tear me open
to see the dirty faggot inside. And when they
came in drunk or high with their own wounds,
when they bragged about their scuffles with the knife
and that other world of men, I sat there and sutured.
I sat there like an old woman and sewed them up.
Stitch after stitch, the slender exactness of my fingers
attempted perfection. I sat there and sewed them up.
As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, I have a major feline situation at home (rescued mom and three kittens in basement, two loud and affectionate grown cats in the house proper), so I thought we'd do a poem from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (T.S. Eliot, 1939). Here is a video reading of “Macavity: The Mystery Cat.” I have at least one cat who fits the bill for this "type" of cat. You hear a crash, run into the room, and there she is, looking around, as if asking "who could have done that?" with great indignation and surprise.
Finally, we'll close out this Thursday with Uncle Auden on himself:
* I don’t get acting jobs because of my looks.
* My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.
* When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.
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