Rubbernecking in a Garden of Sorrows

When I started this blog idea I was pretty sure it'd be a trip down memory lane with a lot of my favorite poems, with a few new discoveries along the way. Instead, it's really been an avenue to discover things I'd never read, especially contemporary poetry (with which I've had a complex and not always happy relationship). 


A lot of it is finding new ways to encounter poems: podcasts (Curtis Fox's "Poetry Off the Shelf" is especially tasteful and fascinating), websites (poets.org has got great mini-bios and samples of work both text and audio) and I'm still looking into several iPhone apps that seem promising. 


I found this in the Poetry Foundation's podcast series "Essential American Poets" - check it out on their website or via iTunes.

There She Is

Linda Gregg

When I go into the garden, there she is.
The specter holds up her arms to show
that her hands are eaten off.
She is silent because of the agony.
There is blood on her face.
I can see she has done this to herself.
So she would not feel the other pain.
And it is true, she does not feel it.
She does not even see me.
It is not she anymore, but the pain itself
that moves her. I look and think
how to forget. How can I live while she
stands there? And if I take her life
what will that make of me? I cannot
touch her, make her conscious.
It would hurt her too much.
I hear the sound all through the air
that was her eating, but it is on its own now,
completely separate from her. I think
I am supposed to look. I am not supposed
to turn away. I am supposed to see each detail
and all expression gone. My God, I think,
if paradise is to be here
it will have to include her.




The mystery and ambiguity are a little maddening in their being so elusive. It's like there's an analogy being drawn to something so obvious, but I can't quite make out what it is. 


I don't think it's as simple as a ghost story or an image from a penny dreadful. There's something deeper at play here, but I can't parse it out. An animal chewing its way from a trap? A bird caught in the garden feeder? Suicide or self-harm or something else entirely?


I keep returning to it because I can't look away.