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PDP Installment 2: When I Reminisce Over You(Siphoned Sounds: "Today" by Tom Scott, "Flowers" by Madlib & "Return of the Crooklyn Dodgers" by Crooklyn Dodgers '95)
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Discussing my poem "None of Us Saints"--from my forthcoming collection Honest Engine--in this episode of the P-Double Podcast. Remember when I said the target was eight to ten minutes? Yeah, I missed that again . . . but there's more good music this time!
Again, for reference, the poem I am discussing is published below. If you want to see me interview my grandmother, Ruth Dargan, on the subjects of then Senator Barack Obama as well as Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King, please see this series of videos first published on TheRoot.com.
Again, for reference, the poem I am discussing is published below. If you want to see me interview my grandmother, Ruth Dargan, on the subjects of then Senator Barack Obama as well as Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King, please see this series of videos first published on TheRoot.com.
NONE OF US SAINTS
~for Ruth Dargan
Tell me who presides over the service
when the minister’s mother has died.
Whose hands attempt to lift him? Who
looks upon his self-anointing face, explains
This is the Lord’s will—the cancer
that swam through, seized the body
in which the preacher’s flesh first firmed?
Thou art a rock. Thou hast shown thyself
firm. Maybe. It’s possible he could
right himself—weak though giving
his weight to the pulpit—and raise
his mother’s spirit skyward with the wind
aid of God’s breath. But, no,
he would be more human than holy
at her passing—more Adam than angel.
Let him remain on the floor--
saliva and tears blended on his lips as he asks,
No talk of God—my mother is dead.
Tell me where I’ll find that preacher.
He is the one I will summon
to send my dying grandmother home--
a man, not a rock—for none here are Peter,
none of us saints. We are braids
tied between birth and death’s buoys.
None of us know that dark
sea beneath, but bring me the preacher
who can cry, who I can see
brims with salt and water.
Copyright © Kyle Dargan, 2015
~for Ruth Dargan
Tell me who presides over the service
when the minister’s mother has died.
Whose hands attempt to lift him? Who
looks upon his self-anointing face, explains
This is the Lord’s will—the cancer
that swam through, seized the body
in which the preacher’s flesh first firmed?
Thou art a rock. Thou hast shown thyself
firm. Maybe. It’s possible he could
right himself—weak though giving
his weight to the pulpit—and raise
his mother’s spirit skyward with the wind
aid of God’s breath. But, no,
he would be more human than holy
at her passing—more Adam than angel.
Let him remain on the floor--
saliva and tears blended on his lips as he asks,
No talk of God—my mother is dead.
Tell me where I’ll find that preacher.
He is the one I will summon
to send my dying grandmother home--
a man, not a rock—for none here are Peter,
none of us saints. We are braids
tied between birth and death’s buoys.
None of us know that dark
sea beneath, but bring me the preacher
who can cry, who I can see
brims with salt and water.
Copyright © Kyle Dargan, 2015