{"id":559,"date":"2017-11-03T15:44:24","date_gmt":"2017-11-03T20:44:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thespectaclstg.wpengine.com\/?p=559"},"modified":"2018-05-07T10:52:52","modified_gmt":"2018-05-07T15:52:52","slug":"poetry-by-anne-barngrover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/?p=559","title":{"rendered":"Poetry by Anne Barngrover"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tennessee is Burning<\/h4>\n
\r\nTwo kids wanted to set the South on fire.\r\nThat\u2019s all we know for now. Its flames so bright blind men could see,\r\nthe wildfire ravaged the mountainside, felling telephone wires\r\n\r\nand trees fuzzy with rain and copper leaves. Prior\r\nto late November, a drought languished for three\r\nmonths. One match kicked, and now the South is on fire.\r\n\r\nI am nowhere near the mountains, but I can smell the air\r\nlit thick with particulate and charred debris.\r\nThe light today burns weak, the sky looks smeared, and fire<\/em>\r\n\r\nhas so many meanings\u2014noun, verb\u2014the entire\r\nisland of Manhattan could fit inside the wreckage of Tennessee\u2014\r\nand no one cares that the South is now on fire\r\n\r\nbecause if we shout fire!<\/em> we could mean liar, liar<\/em>.\r\nWe could mean to ring all the bells at once, a prophecy\r\nsaid of volcanoes, a vivid light, a splendor. There is green fire\r\n\r\nand there is red fire, and through the South course rivers of fire,\r\na false or misleading beacon no one could have foreseen\r\nexcept that we should have. The South has always been on fire.\r\nIt just keeps reeling me back in\u2014it\u2019s a luminous body, a star.\r\n<\/p><\/pre>\n
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Why I Couldn’t Write<\/h4>\n
\r\nBecause I took everything out \r\n            of my drawers \r\n                        and piled it on the floor. \r\nBecause it was rush hour at twilight in Central Time.\r\n\r\n                                          Because poems became like marbles\u2014\r\nthere was no way inside \r\n                          and I had splintered myself already. \r\n                                                                                            Who cared\r\nif words fizzled and rhymed? Who cared if the lines broke\r\n                                                                      like powder\r\n                                       from a stale donut in my mouth \r\n                                                     and I had to hold out my hand to catch them?\r\n\r\nBecause I wore a lead apron. \r\n                                  Because they saw me dancing alone \r\n          in a lilac dress and thought, how sad.<\/em>\r\n                        Because I would stare at the ceiling \r\n                                                                   and there was nothing. \r\nBecause I would stare at the television \r\n\tand there was nothing.\r\nBecause I would stare at the walls and there was nothing\r\n\r\n                    except telephone wires curled into cobwebs.\r\nBecause I couldn\u2019t get a job.\r\n                                    Because I drove through Missouri \r\n                                                                        I drove through Illinois \r\n                                                                        I drove through Indiana \r\n                                                                        I drove through Ohio \r\n                                                                        I drove through Kentucky \r\n                                                                        I drove through Tennessee\r\n                                                and exit ramps didn\u2019t matter.\r\n\r\nBecause I wanted to be a block.\r\n\t\t\t         I wanted to be a paperback, slid \r\n                                                        into a bookshelf, safe and contained.\r\n\r\nI came across ski boats of many colors. They stood\r\n                       upright in a half-circle like ancient ruins.\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t                                       Whatever.\r\n             The image no longer stuck in my mind like a penny\r\n                                                          and nothing rendered anymore.\r\n\r\nDarkness poured over everything \r\n             as though the sky were a tipped jar of molasses.\r\n\r\nThere was no thinking my way out of an X-ray. \r\n\r\n                                                   I added the chemicals back into my brain \r\n\t\t        one by one, row by row\u2014 \r\nGum Drops lined the roof of a house made of crackers and candy. \r\n                                 My brain of swirls and loops.\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t                   My brain of sacred decay.\r\n\r\nBecause the veins brightened \r\n                                                                                       in my eyes.\r\n                                    Because the people who loved me cried \r\n                                                             and I couldn\u2019t\u2014not in years\u2014\r\nI don\u2019t know why.\r\n                                                                                 (That\u2019s a lie.)\r\nBecause I\u2019m not supposed to talk about what happened, \r\n                                                                 and if I were doing yoga, \r\n            then what was the problem, anyway?\r\n                                      Yoga gave me heat rash. Yoga gave me ringworm,\r\n\t\t\t\t\t                                             pink spirals on my thigh.\r\n                                                                   I didn\u2019t talk to anyone \r\nalthough I went there to make friends.\r\n                                                 I learned that I was stronger, \r\n(quieter)\r\n                                than any man.\r\n\r\n                                                                     Because I went through every object in my house.\r\n                                  I drove old towels to an animal shelter,\r\nthen I put everything back in my drawers.\r\n\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t               It was cleaner, less cluttered,\r\n\t\t\t\t\t                         only filled with what I needed \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n                                                                                     but not at all the same.\r\n<\/p><\/pre>\n
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Final Days, 2016<\/h4>\n
\r\n            \u2014for M.A.H.<\/em>\r\n\r\nI tell my sister I learned that space is like a donut\r\n\r\n           in that it wraps around itself and never ends\r\n\r\nbut the kicker is that it never began<\/em>, or rather, begins<\/em> \r\n\r\n           because time is like that, too\u2014\r\n\r\na donut or bagel or danish, and so is God. No, no!<\/em> \r\n\r\n           she shouts and pushes back from her chair. \r\n\r\nShe muffles her ears. I can\u2019t take it! Infinity freaks me out.<\/em> \r\n\r\n           I remember when I, too, was that afraid, \r\n\r\never since I saw Cookie Monster devour the moon. \r\n\r\n           Now, I find comfort in what I cannot explain. \r\n\r\nOr perhaps comfort<\/em> is not the word I\u2019m looking for. \r\n\r\n           These days, I hold infinity at bay like sugar \r\n\r\ncaramelized in my teeth, the seeds and stones muscled \r\n\r\n           in my shoulder blades, my gray-eyed children \r\n\r\nof whom I dream\u2014smaller than the punctuation \r\n\r\n           in this poem and cradled in the place \r\n\r\nwhere our bones have gone unnamed. The Greeks stared \r\n\r\n           and shook their heads because the pelvis \r\n\r\nwas unlike anything they\u2019d ever seen, formed of three \r\n\r\n           bones that fuse together once we\u2019ve grown.\r\n\r\nFor women, it happens when we bleed. Mine took forever.\r\n\r\n\t   The doctor squinted at my hipbones, perky \r\n\r\nand glowing in their X-rays like slabs of cod encased \r\n\r\n           in ice on display. Underdeveloped<\/em> was the word \r\n\r\nhe penned for me at fourteen, my body all right \r\n\r\n           degree angles in a one-piece bathing suit, \r\n\r\nmy spine nonlinear, my hamstrings tight as cello strings. \r\n\r\n           I never used to understand why my mother \r\n\r\nwould rub her temples before dinner and insist \r\n\r\n           that we pray. But the heavens aren\u2019t meant to console.\r\n\r\nOn the darkest night of 2016, the air is too dry to light \r\n\r\n           the solstice lamps we planned to set sail \r\n\r\ninto the sky ablaze with planets that appear to us \r\n\r\n           as pinpricks of light the size of a freckle or a word\u2014\r\n\r\nif only we could see them. Tonight, I scan the darkness \r\n\r\n           as I never have before because I have lost someone, \r\n\r\nand she isn\u2019t coming back. I wish I had taken Calculus. \r\n\r\n           I wish I could interpret the numbers and graphs, \r\n\r\nthe geometry of a spine that bends until it halts\u2014\r\n\r\n           a medical miracle, unforeseen\u2014the difference \r\n\r\nbetween actual infinity<\/em> and potential<\/em>. I wonder if this is where \r\n\r\n           we go when we die\u2014the innominate place \r\n\r\nthat the Greeks knew but couldn\u2019t say\u2014where we begin \r\n\r\n           again in another world, another plane. \r\n\r\nThe ancients had so many names. I wish I could ask them \r\n\r\n           how long it will take her to catch up to where we are \r\n\r\nnow, and what if, when she finally arrives, we look away? \r\n\r\n           The last word my friend wrote me was deserve<\/em>. \r\n\r\nHow I\u2019d love to share a donut with her in a caf\u00e9. \r\n\r\n           Tonight, I imagine infinity curled before me \r\n\r\nas my fireplace that I am too scared to use \r\n\r\n           because I don\u2019t know my own impulses, \r\n\r\nmy own release of power. Or, perhaps I\u2019m scared \r\n\r\n           because I do. What if I burn it all down? \r\n\r\nWhat if I cannot be contained? My hearth is a black hole \r\n\r\n           I didn\u2019t know I could attain. Be with me,\r\n\r\nMonica. I cannot do this alone. The night is cold, \r\n\r\n           and I want to light a fire.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/p><\/pre>\n
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Anne Barngrover is the author of two books of poetry, Brazen Creature<\/em> (forthcoming 2018, University of Akron Press) and Yell Hound Blues<\/em> (Shipwreckt Books, 2013). She is an assistant professor of Creative Writing and English at Saint Leo University and lives in Tampa, Florida.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tennessee Is Burning | Why I Couldn’t Write | Final Days, 2016<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[47],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}