Meg Kearney: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

photo by Gabriel Parker

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George Says Stop Writing About Yourself

(New York, December 2001)

 

This one’s for George, who urged take off those

shit-kicker boots, leave your husband wrapped

in the scroll of last night’s sheets, forget your mother

sipping a cigarette, a Dugan’s Dew—forget

your other mother, your other father, too,

 

and the one you last saw in a coffin not looking

at all like himself, so much not-him you couldn’t

bear be near that body. Forget your first kiss—

how it sounded like peanut butter, tasted like

a train. Stop talking about the Alabama Slammers

 

and four Blue Whales or those men you drove crazy

with your push-him, pull-him love. And don’t speak

of babies, about not having them or the ugly one

who’s so much a part of your nights she must be

real, her mongrel face breaking into sadness.

 

Don’t talk about holding her above your head,

calling her Sweet Girl, Mama’s Girl—how she almost

smiles. Just for George, this poem looks beyond

Sea Monkeys and that first Louisville Slugger.

It opens the window to the stench, three months

 

now of that smell, man-made, human, wafting

from downtown. This poem is in the street,

where war does its thing. See, there’s a man

walking up Broadway: his shoes, suit, eyelashes,

lips covered with dust that used to be a building.

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In June 2021, The Word Works Press will publish Meg Kearney’s All Morning the Crows, winner of the 2020 Washington Prize for poetry. Meg is also author of An Unkindness of Ravens and Home By Now, winner of the PEN New England L.L. Winship Award; a heroic crown, The Ice Storm, published as chapbook in 2020; and three verse novels for teens. Her award-winning picture book, Trouper, is illustrated by E.B. Lewis. Meg’s poetry has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s “A Writer’s Almanac” and Ted Kooser’s “American Life in Poetry” series, and included in the 2017 Best American Poetry anthology (Natasha Tretheway, guest editor). She lives in New Hampshire and directs the Solstice MFA in Creative Writing Program in Massachusetts.

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Comments

[Grace Cavalieri]

Meg inspires the world with that poem: so free-wheeling, smart, movable, touching--
goes so many places radiating outward, hurting, making everyone happy.

[Jiwon Choi]

I surrender to the pure beauty and truth of Meg's words. We still mourn that day.

[Terence Winch]

Thanks for the wonderful comment, Grace.

[Terence Winch]

I'm with you there, Jiwon.

[Peter Kearney]

Thank you, Terry. I read the poem over and over and wondered who George was and are the options Meg rejects images from her own life. Surely some are, but maybe that's not the way to approach the poem. I need to educate my taste for modern poetry, but I did begin to sense the power and the emotion in this work, perhaps all the more by leaving aside my questions.
By the way, I also watched the video on Meg's book about her adopted dog Trouper, a very good way to get to know Meg a little better, and, I think, to get a better feel for this poem about George's advice as well.

[Terence Winch]

Thanks, Peter. I couldn't resist sending you this, for obvious reasons.

[Faye Maris]

Love it, Meg. Very touching. I remember meeting you on a boat leaving Stat Island some years ago. Don’t know if you might remember that
short encounter. After I looked up from reading some of your poems, you told me you had been watching my reactions. It seemed a sweet, intimate moment. Faye