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Answer the Door
“Choose one or the other, demands the light. / Choose both, says the dark.” ANSWER THE DOOR votes with the dark and its predilection for paradox and possibility. These poems invite readers into a world populated by imaginary friends, 1950s television icons, inmates at a county prison, lead pirates, plastic knights, a Sunday school class and Jesus’s secret lover, Quintilian and Oneal Moore, Salome and Deborah Kerr, Pixie the Dog and a cat named Schrödinger. The book is grounded in the resonant particulars of our daily lives and in the longings that inform them; it puts its faith in the mysteries inherent in these lives and in these longings. It trusts in language’s insatiable hungers. It argues for a justice inseparable from compassion and a beauty inextricable from loss. It is grateful for the hard work of propositions to keep us rooted in time and place.
106 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 3, 2020
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 5, 2020
We are the publisher, so all of our authors get five stars from us. Excerpts:
IT HAPPENED
It happened,
and then everything in your life happened
either before
or after it.
It happened
and, from then on, all you could think
was why it happened
and what you could’ve done to stop it happening.
You’re seduced again
by that tease, the past tense, its wiles,
the way it leaves a door
ajar, even as it slams it shut.
It happened, and though
life proved far from perfect before it happened,
you miss the luxury
of all that time before it happened.
It happened
so unexpectedly, you keep searching for reasons
why you never expected it
to happen.
It happened.
The anonymity of those two perpetrators:
assassin disguised as pronoun,
thug of a verb.
It happened. In a minute
you will think about it again, and it will happen
again. It happened,
and you could do nothing to stop it,
and so it never stops happening.
See, it is happening now.
MY LIFE AS A PATIENT
1
Are you seeing a doctor?
my professor asks, noticing the burn marks
on the wrists my cuffs tried to hide.
If only that were enough: to see a doctor.
To look at him for a while
and then close the door and drive off.
2
Visits! That’s what my parents told me
to call my trips to the doctor.
As if I just happened to be in the neighborhood
and decided to pay a call
on a Harvard-educated man who spoke softly
whenever he talked about sex,
and he talked about sex often.
3
Finding me naked,
fire does not turn away. It needs me
as much as I need it.
4
If, when I was seven, you’d asked me
if my mother ever tried to kill me,
I’d have said no,
she wasn’t really trying to murder me.
Just teach me a lesson.
5
That’s ridiculous! the doctor laughs
when I admit I’m still burning myself.
By now I should’ve learned
to tell a psychiatrist only what’s not
too difficult for him to hear.
6
I’m just visiting, the flame says
after I light the next match.
No, stay, I beg.
Stay as long as you can.
IT HAPPENED
It happened,
and then everything in your life happened
either before
or after it.
It happened
and, from then on, all you could think
was why it happened
and what you could’ve done to stop it happening.
You’re seduced again
by that tease, the past tense, its wiles,
the way it leaves a door
ajar, even as it slams it shut.
It happened, and though
life proved far from perfect before it happened,
you miss the luxury
of all that time before it happened.
It happened
so unexpectedly, you keep searching for reasons
why you never expected it
to happen.
It happened.
The anonymity of those two perpetrators:
assassin disguised as pronoun,
thug of a verb.
It happened. In a minute
you will think about it again, and it will happen
again. It happened,
and you could do nothing to stop it,
and so it never stops happening.
See, it is happening now.
MY LIFE AS A PATIENT
1
Are you seeing a doctor?
my professor asks, noticing the burn marks
on the wrists my cuffs tried to hide.
If only that were enough: to see a doctor.
To look at him for a while
and then close the door and drive off.
2
Visits! That’s what my parents told me
to call my trips to the doctor.
As if I just happened to be in the neighborhood
and decided to pay a call
on a Harvard-educated man who spoke softly
whenever he talked about sex,
and he talked about sex often.
3
Finding me naked,
fire does not turn away. It needs me
as much as I need it.
4
If, when I was seven, you’d asked me
if my mother ever tried to kill me,
I’d have said no,
she wasn’t really trying to murder me.
Just teach me a lesson.
5
That’s ridiculous! the doctor laughs
when I admit I’m still burning myself.
By now I should’ve learned
to tell a psychiatrist only what’s not
too difficult for him to hear.
6
I’m just visiting, the flame says
after I light the next match.
No, stay, I beg.
Stay as long as you can.
Displaying 1 of 1 review