Quincy Scott Jones: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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She Said in Bed

 

When I die let my body fly.

Book me a trip on a rocket ship

and launch me at dawn.  Play some

Hendrix and a Nina Simone song.  Give me

a eulogy through a static headset.  Let the

booster jets be my pallbearers and give

me a smoke plume in lieu of a tomb.  And

everyone awake who tries to fake

some caffeinated joy can take their eyes

out of their latte chai and turn their face

to space instead.

 

What would you like for breakfast? I said.

 

She said in bed Let me sail on solar winds over

all of the lunar seas

past crises and clouds and tranquility

nectar and moisture and fertility

even past the pyramids NASA never lets us see

until my body passes right over the moon.

Let me float like a balloon until I’m over Venus—

the namesake of flytraps

the reason for jimmy hats

both deity and devil and a woman

at that.  Let my ship land on a mountain cap

and let my body burn in a snowfall of lead. she said.

 

What do you want for breakfast? I said.

 

Let me bathe in 700 degrees

under storms of pure CO₂.

Let me walk without shoes

on volcanic plains and wash my hair

in sulfuric rains just don’t leave me

down here.  On Earth I watch

fathers get shot sitting in patrol cars

while cops shoot sons with empty hands.

 

                                                Bury me

on a land where I can never stand

in air I can never breathe

on a planet I can never know

around a star I cannot see.

Let me leave this world when I am dead.

 

And chocolate chip pancakes please she said.

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Quincy Scott Jones is an associate professor at Barnard College, the poetry advisor for Columbia University Undergraduate Creative Writing, and the author of The T-Bone Series and  How to Kill Yourself Instead of Your Children.  His work has appeared in the African American Review, The North American Review, the Bellingham Review, Love Jawns: A Mixtape, and The Feminist Wire.  With Nina Sharma he co-curates Blackshop, a column highlighting BIPOC artists.  His graphic narrative, BlackNerd, is in the works. [Author photo by Dominique Sindayiganza]

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   Harmonia Rosales, Birth of Oshun, detail, 2017, oil on canvas. Rosales uses Greek and Roman mythologies to draw viewers in, as in this work— modeled on Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus”—which depicts the Yòrúba goddess Oshun.

Comments

[Phyllis Rosenzweig]

Loved it. Thanks.

[Nin Andrews]

Brilliant! And the pics to go with it!!!

[Bill Nevins]

I love this playful yet serious poem and its brilliant deployment of rhyme. I said.
"Let me leave this world when I am dead.
And chocolate chip pancakes please she said."

[Anne Harding Woodworth]

I want those pancakes, too. I'm happily exhausted after reading this.

[lally]

delighted in every word choice in this brilliantly deceptive paen to transcending suffering

[Don Berger]

While feasting on this poem I felt like I was visiting some astonishing foreign country--what a thrill on this Sunday morning. Who doesn't or wouldn't love the two levels it's working on, the wishes upon dying and the breakfast scene, which appears in the poem so suddenly and wonderfully. And how those two realms end up blending in the mind together, and the rhyme that helps make the poem sail as it does. Quincy, what a poet you are! Terence what a curator of songs that makes our days! Another keeper here!

[Terence Winch]

Don: great comment. Thank you.

[Denise Duhamel]

Delightful! I love the pacing in this poem! Love and death and pancakes. Bravo!

[Sr. Leslie]

I love this poem!!! Printing it out…And yes Terence, “playful and profound “…Thanks Terence and Quincy Scott!

[Terence Winch]

Leslie---thanks for the comment.

[Eileen Reich]

I love this poem and the artwork!

[Doug Pell]

Brilliant! The namesake of flytraps caught me and won’t let go. Each time I finish it I want to read it again. Thanks for sharing.