This week, as Guest Author, I will be spotlighting innovative work by women poets in the form of new writing and review-essays. Today I'm delighted to share a new poem by Karyna McGlynn. Karyna McGlynn is the author of Hothouse (Sarabande Books 2017), I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl (Sarabande Books 2009), and several chapbooks including The 9-Day Queen Gets Lost on Her Way to the Execution (Willow Springs Editions 2016). Her poems have recently appeared in The Kenyon Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Witness, Georgia Review, New England Review, and The Academy of American Poet’s Poem-A-Day. Karyna is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Christian Brothers University in Memphis. She’s an avid collagist and is currently working on a new book, 50 Things Kate Bush Taught Me About the Multiverse. Happy summer, and enjoy!
A New Poem by Karyna McGlynn
HOW TO TALK THE MANIC AWAY
I used to be so mad—I had daggers coming out
of my puffed sleeves. I decorated Easter baskets
with the plastic daisies of my Fury & mounted
them on Playtex-pink three-speeds.
Every bike I ever owned suffered
a spectacular death: hit by a grey Grand Am,
tossed like a stone into the quarry, snatched
through a broken window, found mangled
in a ditch. I shook my swampy sobs
out of their frames & ironed my playbills
for breakfast. I mounted my miscues
on the walls of a rocket. I covered
my mistakes in neon & called it Art.
I charged people to listen to me scream.
I moved to the desert because I'm supposed to
be capricious like that. Some people said
my hubris would be better in the mouth
of a dinosaur, or as the silhouette of
a disgraced news anchor. In a West Texas bar,
some girl asked if I'd seen the Marfa Lights.
I stood up whiskily on my stool & said,
“Bitch, I AM the Marfa Lights!”
I used to collect lace collars & white gloves
made for the Nervous & the Consumptive.
I stalked old ladies’ estate sales.
Some of still had boxes of seamed stockings
wrapped in tissue paper
& lavender water & bakelite hair combs.
None of this stuff ever fit or endeared me
to others. Imagine going through life
with white cotton seams around
your fingers. Imagine the Whole World
saying, “Don't Touch.” Still, in several
nightdresses I clambered over
a field of sods. There was a desk
in the distance with one light in its
Top Drawer. The night was open to me.
I took out my loudest shears
& cut a hole in the landscape
to make a space for the Silence
I was immediately accused of violating.
My afterlife was a trial of ill-
fitting hats, spilled sugar & Little Girls
who loved their pet bunnies too much.
So much, they squeezed their lights out,
nestled their bodies in the doll carriage.
What shall I paint for the mourners:
an old schooner marooned in a field
of clover? A corpse that stinks its way
to the Truth? A bottle of warm
poppy milk? A dumbshow? Shall I
keep up appearances even though
I am slowly losing my sawdust
through an open seam? I know:
I should.
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