At the table: Dagne Forrest, Samantha Neugebauer, Jason Schneiderman, Kathleen Volk Miller, Lisa Zerkle
This recording had a rough start, Slushies. We’re talking technical difficulties, disappearing dogs, and tomato-eating cats. But we rallied in time to discuss two poems from Eli Karren. Jason hails the Whitmanian, associative line found in these poems. We’re taken with the specificity of detail, right down to botanical names and brands of beer. And speaking of Whitman, Kathy shares this scathing review of his then newly published Leaves of Grass.
Lisa gives a shout out to Asheville as they welcome visitors one year after Hurricane Helene. Sam remembers that nearby North Carolina mountain towns stood in for the Catskills in the movie “Dirty Dancing.” And we close with a poetry book recommendation, Gabrielle Calvocoressi’s The New Economy, just named to the National Book Award’s Short List. Stay tuned for our next episode, also featuring a poem from Eli Karren. As always, thanks for listening!
Eli Karren is a poet and educator based in Austin, TX. His work can be found in the swamp pink, At Length, Palette Poetry, and the Harvard Review.
Mountain Laurel
Last summer I drank until blackout, then chatted about Cronenberg with my neighbor.
My head lolled over the fenceline.
Even the ivy judged me.
In the morning, I woke early to go to the pool, imagining a polar plunge as the ideal hangover
cure.
Really, it was a baptism.
The purple light erupting first, over the city, mirrored back across the water, like a shattered jar
of preserves, before the orange took hold, a tiny flame cupped between hands,
being blown full to life.
How Old Testament of me!
To dip my head beneath the current, still in the blackness, and rise to the light.
To watch the old men, naked and shriveled, towel off in the cold air, speaking of a tree
that was to be sheared, their bodies backlit by roosting bats and mountain laurel.
I don’t remember the last night I didn’t drink.
For the longest time I said it was a response to the boredom.
To the loneliness.
I had kept myself distracted with NBA highlights and foreign films. With amateur
pornography and snapchat filters.
In a way, I felt as though I was already dead.
A ghost wearing a human suit.
That at any moment I could be cracked open.
That inside, was the rising tide of a summer storm, turning the sky ominous and teenage.
Maybe, feathers. Stuffing.
Packing peanuts.
Elegy for the East Side
Just tonight, walked from one end to the other, sequestered to the sidestreets, skipping
over puddles and burned books
Everything clumsy and beautiful and new
Popped in for a drink at the garden supply store
Noticed all the young couples sipping cocktails from flowerpots, kissing over pinwheels
& lawn gnomes
Could make out over the sound of small talk, the DJ spinning Plantasia
The wisteria and wilted chard seeming nonplussed noncommittal
This place isn’t the same since you left it
Outside Mama Dearest the Cryptobros try to film themselves jumping a Cybertruck
on a Lime Scooter
Their wives hold Hamms in a semi-circle and look slightly like a Midwestern coven
So elegant in their clear disdain
Inside the parlor, the shrill recreation of a hunting cabin
Taxidermied deer heads pepper the space between pin up girls, creating a dichotomy of
destructive desire
Nothing a shot of Malort and some curly fries couldn’t handle
On the corner, telephone pole advertisements proffer mass ascension and a wet T-shirt contest
A candlelit vigil at the American Sniper’s grave
A shotgun of Lonestars chased down with a shotgun of Modelo
The Texas sky somehow wider than ever
The frequencies of bluebonnet giving way to indigo and periwinkle
The quiet streets to house shows and seances
This, so unlike the night we met
No stars
No fireworks
No strangers in the street holding sparklers as we find each other in the handsy cocoon
of porchlight
No, only the moon sitting on the treeline like the egg sac of a wolf spider
But on the water a cross between a duck boat and a pedal pub tied together with purple fairy
lights
Someone new, pumping her legs beside me
The first to stir more than leaf litter and carcinogenic pollen
Licking the salt from the rim of my margarita and shrugging
A shorthand to say she is taking me home
