Poems from "the kind of person who will take the last cookie"
Apr/27/2008 10:46 PM Filed in: Books
Sinners Welcome
by Mary Karr
I have to share a poem from this collection. I got to hear Mary Karr speak at the Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing, at a session called “Writing and Praying Your Way to Truth”. At first, I had no desire to go, because I thought she must be this super-spiritual writer who only writes in some type of a prayer-trance. It turns out, she was a worse sinner than I ever was. She was brutal, charming, disarming, and almost scary all at the same time. She had us laughing like twits. And she’s beautiful.
If I had done my research, of course, I would have known that she wrote The Liars’ Club, a raw, dark, funny memoir about her childhood - complete with an alcoholic bohemian artist mom, butcher knives, insanity and rape.
After her session and a recommendation by Brad Fruhauff, Poetry Editor of Relief Journal, for this collection, I bought it. As an afterword is an essay she wrote at the request of Poetry magazine, “Facing Altars: Poetry and Prayer”. I wanted to copy it and send to everyone I knew.
In case you’re wondering, she does try to write while in a state of prayer, or what she describes as alertness to the movements of the Spirit. Does she do it all the time? No, she says, like she doesn’t floss her teeth every night.
DISGRACELAND
Before my first communion at 40, I clung
to doubt as Satan spider-like stalked
the orb of dark surrounding Eden
for a wormhole into paradise.
God had first formed me in the womb
small as a bite of burger.
Once my lungs were done
He sailed a soul like a lit arrow
to inflame me. Maybe that piercing
made me howl at birth,
or the masked creatures
whose scalpel cut a lightning bolt to free me—
I was hoisted by the heels and swatted, fed
and hauled through rooms. Time-lapse photos show
my fingers grew past crayon outlines,
my feet came to fill spike heels.
Eventually, I lurched out to kiss the wrong mouths,
get stewed, and sulk around. Christ always stood
to one side with a glass of water.
I swatted the sap away.
When my thirst got great enough
to ask, a stream welled up inside;
some jade wave buoyed me forward;
and I found myself upright
in the instant, with a garden
inside my own ribs aflourish. There, the arbor leafs.
The vines push out plump grapes.
You are loved, someone said. Take that
and eat it.
by Mary Karr
I have to share a poem from this collection. I got to hear Mary Karr speak at the Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing, at a session called “Writing and Praying Your Way to Truth”. At first, I had no desire to go, because I thought she must be this super-spiritual writer who only writes in some type of a prayer-trance. It turns out, she was a worse sinner than I ever was. She was brutal, charming, disarming, and almost scary all at the same time. She had us laughing like twits. And she’s beautiful.
If I had done my research, of course, I would have known that she wrote The Liars’ Club, a raw, dark, funny memoir about her childhood - complete with an alcoholic bohemian artist mom, butcher knives, insanity and rape.
After her session and a recommendation by Brad Fruhauff, Poetry Editor of Relief Journal, for this collection, I bought it. As an afterword is an essay she wrote at the request of Poetry magazine, “Facing Altars: Poetry and Prayer”. I wanted to copy it and send to everyone I knew.
In case you’re wondering, she does try to write while in a state of prayer, or what she describes as alertness to the movements of the Spirit. Does she do it all the time? No, she says, like she doesn’t floss her teeth every night.
DISGRACELAND
Before my first communion at 40, I clung
to doubt as Satan spider-like stalked
the orb of dark surrounding Eden
for a wormhole into paradise.
God had first formed me in the womb
small as a bite of burger.
Once my lungs were done
He sailed a soul like a lit arrow
to inflame me. Maybe that piercing
made me howl at birth,
or the masked creatures
whose scalpel cut a lightning bolt to free me—
I was hoisted by the heels and swatted, fed
and hauled through rooms. Time-lapse photos show
my fingers grew past crayon outlines,
my feet came to fill spike heels.
Eventually, I lurched out to kiss the wrong mouths,
get stewed, and sulk around. Christ always stood
to one side with a glass of water.
I swatted the sap away.
When my thirst got great enough
to ask, a stream welled up inside;
some jade wave buoyed me forward;
and I found myself upright
in the instant, with a garden
inside my own ribs aflourish. There, the arbor leafs.
The vines push out plump grapes.
You are loved, someone said. Take that
and eat it.