Three Vivid, Varied Perspectives
Poetry in Our September Issue
Dear Reader,
The poems in our September issue invite me to share three vivid, varied perspectives. Luke Patterson’s prose poem “Extrication Day” offers a glimpse into the life of an EMT who sometimes needs his own rescue. In Luisa Muradyan’s “I Make Jokes When I’m Devastated,” the author deftly blends reflections on Jesus with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, reminding us that humor and sorrow are both human responses to the unimaginable. And for a journey into the surreal, Ernest Ògúnyẹmí’s “The Dream” transports us through a mesmerizing landscape of the mind, where lush language and dreamlike imagery intertwine in a symphony of stars and music.
You can listen to each author read their poem by clicking the links below.
Take care and listen well,
David Mahaffey, Associate Editor
Extrication Day
By Luke Patterson
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“Extrication Day.”
It is easy to forget your own body with a patient under your hands. In training we learned how to call the air ambulance—how to say the right words on the radio, hand off our patient to the flight crew, and keep our heads beneath the spinning helicopter blades. But people forget to protect themselves. Once I was hurt badly enough to take an air ambulance. The medic missed my vein twice, and when he pushed the fentanyl, I said what a strange experience it was to be on this side of the stretcher. He ducked as he slid me into the helicopter, and I remembered in that moment one of the flight medics that had trained me on extrication day. She was tall and beautiful and laughed easily. I saw her months later playing the piano in a dark hospital lobby. It was the dead of night, and I watched her fingers curl slowly and gently into the keys, precise and delicate enough to stitch, when we’re lucky, the rough seams of life back together.
I Make Jokes When I’m Devastated
By Luisa Muradyan
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“I Make Jokes When I’m Devastated.”
If you walk the stations of the cross, most tour guides
will politely point out the spot where they think Jesus
may have fallen or the spot where
he may have met his mother.
This holy place may have been a few meters west
or possibly in that gift shop over there.
We live in a world of “close enough”:
The missiles that fell on the village
did not directly hit my grandmother’s
childhood home, but they were close enough.
The Russian invaders claimed they did not mean
to bomb Babyn Yar, but their shells were close enough.
My great-grandmother wasn’t that Jewish,
but she was close enough. When you ask me for
another response to tragedy, I tend to begin with a joke. Which isn’t
exactly the shape of sorrow, but I assure you,
it is close enough.
The Dream
By Ernest Ògúnyẹmí
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“The Dream.”
In the small, trembling room of my longing, A.,
Last night—summer wearing the walls, autumn
Spread in orange colors on the floor, upon which
We lay, two quiet pianos, soul music pouring
Over the hidden grass—we touched, my face to the mirror of yours.
But plain, simple, as if we had just been born
In the dream, you and I, learning (like children
In kindergarten, alphabet song) what it is that sonatas
The heart, what it is that gardens the body.
I am falling in love with you, though I cannot
Tell anymore what it means to be home
To the wanting sparrow, to make home in
The river of another’s praise. Beethoven played
From the book of leaves that sat in the air.
Saying nothing, I held your hand, and we rose together,
Like rain rising back to the sky from the earth
In like manner in which it fell, and we danced,
Our bodies silent as the fire that brimmed your
Eyes. It was not tiredness or boredom that made
Us stop, but a primal knowing, the string vibrating
To stillness. I held you like a water jar; in my
Arms, you nestled like the light of you had found
Amen. Then we kissed. It was brief; your eyes
Became two moons, pouring in the dark. It is night-
Away now, a long road of glass with a bench on the side,
On which I sit listening to the aching birds of time.
Yet I remember burningly the warmth
Of your mouth, the vibrant taste of your lip, a coin.
All the gentle stars, they fell quiet, then again
Picked up the little golden bells of their hymn.
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