RECKONING

don’t worry about me
i am not well but you’ve worried enough
my prosperity has a body

count—

this shielded flesh
conspicuous & allowed to be
balks at being back-

ground—

this mouth taught (without being taught)
it is clearest & loudest & purest
squirms when it must shut up & become

ears—

i do not know how to be ears
i know how to open my mouth monstrously
wide to spew & eat

words—

words are my birthright & we the
authors bulldoze other stories to rubble
so the Other trips over each foregone

conclusion—

i am trained to make murder invisible
but understories cling, bloody mine
with the dragged, sullied

bodies—

of those disappeared beneath my
own soft landing
we need other & better

stories—

speak please, whatever you have to say—
pull out this blighted story by the roots
& plant a new one, green, tender, & worth

loving—

THE SMALL I

this is my country

look
i overturn the junk
drawer of my
white/middle-class
life and take stock
rifling
i find i am not a capital letter anymore
first person singular has shrunk
wizened down
to that apple core i found beneath the car seat
last month
or that ivy there, brown and dead
because i killed it
the waxy leaf tree outside
the front door
(the city said we were its stewards
in a single-page note
in our mail-
box) my heart
brimming then
with the largesse of new motherhood
i thought i could
take on the health
of every tree
in California but
over the course of six
years the ivy became a cloak around
its trunk
then an embrace
then a stranglehold
until tree leaves thinned
i spent a long time
tearing up the roots
of that ivy
now it browns—
saved the tree but
ivy clings
a flammable bolus
around its midsection

and the small i—
how to locate i
when i
am both tree
and ivy?

Saramanda Swigart

Saramanda Swigart has a BA in postcolonial literature and an MFA in writing and literary translation from Columbia University. Her short work, essays, and poetry have appeared in Oxford Magazine, Superstition Review, The Alembic, Fogged Clarity, Ghost Town, The Saranac Review, and Euphony to name a few. She has been teaching literature, creative writing, and argumentative writing and critical thinking at City College of San Francisco since 2014.

I feel that ” The Reckoning ” & ” The Small I ” tell rather than show.
I also love the – punctuation mark and over use it just as much.
Dead ivy is presented but why so clunkily matter-of-fact ? The descriptive bareness doesn’t make the poem better. It’s staid somehow.
Both poems are emotive yet not revealing to me. They remind me of conversations rather than poems.
Poetry is forgiving because it improves with multiple drafts, bursts of inspiration, and critique.
I studied poetry with Elena Sikilianos, a National Endowment of the Arts winner and instructor at the San Francisco Art Institute. I’ve written many poems myself. I’ve definitely dealt with risk and debilitating, annihilating, and depressingly alienating violence recently yet I’m not a vet so cannot post on Wrath Bearing Tree.
I’ve also studied Fiction writing, playwriting, and screenwriting @ SLC and The Harvard Extension School, plus self published two dystopian fiction novels.
The line ” I learned to make murder invisible ” can be stated another way. Clearly the author feels troubled by her task.
As a reader I’m left wondering in what context did Swigart make murder invisible ? As a POA ? A medic ? A reporter ? Perhaps in the infantry ?
I even wondered if Swigart was a former GYN and was conflicted about say, writing prescriptions for plan B or doing D & C procedures.
The photo, primordial mud with an aging ivy leaf etc is vivid without being particularly relevant to the poems.
There is a suggestive split piece of wood in the left hand frame. The image is vaginal in the way of Virginia O’Keefe paintings and photos yet neither poem is about sex.
To me the extra brown mud was definitely meant to evoke human waste, maybe as a new Mother the photo has personal relevance but as the introduction to the poems again it seemed tacked on at the last minute.
As a veteran, the raw sewage in city streets in Iraq, Afghanistan, & Pakistan or even being on Latrine duty must have far reaching after effects..
I guess I’m saying that randomness and lack of context aren’t my cup of tea.
If I seem an overly harsh critic let me explain that I’m equally harsh with my own work.
A ” Thanks – cool poem ” and smiling praise emojis might bring warm fuzzies but ultimately like store bought cookies don’t satisfy.
Perhaps my critique is shadowed by my own troubles in this moment…

5 Comments

Margaret O Lamont says:

December 6, 2021 at 3:35 am

I feel that ” The Reckoning ” & ” The Small I ” tell rather than show.
I also love the – punctuation mark and over use it just as much.
Dead ivy is presented but why so clunkily matter-of-fact ? The descriptive bareness doesn’t make the poem better. It’s staid somehow.
Both poems are emotive yet not revealing to me. They remind me of conversations rather than poems.
Poetry is forgiving because it improves with multiple drafts, bursts of inspiration, and critique.
I studied poetry with Elena Sikilianos, a National Endowment of the Arts winner and instructor at the San Francisco Art Institute. I’ve written many poems myself. I’ve definitely dealt with risk and debilitating, annihilating, and depressingly alienating violence recently yet I’m not a vet so cannot post on Wrath Bearing Tree.
I’ve also studied Fiction writing, playwriting, and screenwriting @ SLC and The Harvard Extension School, plus self published two dystopian fiction novels.
The line ” I learned to make murder invisible ” can be stated another way. Clearly the author feels troubled by her task.
As a reader I’m left wondering in what context did Swigart make murder invisible ? As a POA ? A medic ? A reporter ? Perhaps in the infantry ?
I even wondered if Swigart was a former GYN and was conflicted about say, writing prescriptions for plan B or doing D & C procedures.
The photo, primordial mud with an aging ivy leaf etc is vivid without being particularly relevant to the poems.
There is a suggestive split piece of wood in the left hand frame. The image is vaginal in the way of Virginia O’Keefe paintings and photos yet neither poem is about sex.
To me the extra brown mud was definitely meant to evoke human waste, maybe as a new Mother the photo has personal relevance but as the introduction to the poems again it seemed tacked on at the last minute.
As a veteran, the raw sewage in city streets in Iraq, Afghanistan, & Pakistan or even being on Latrine duty must have far reaching after effects..
I guess I’m saying that randomness and lack of context aren’t my cup of tea.
If I seem an overly harsh critic let me explain that I’m equally harsh with my own work.
A ” Thanks – cool poem ” and smiling praise emojis might bring warm fuzzies but ultimately like store bought cookies don’t satisfy.
Perhaps my critique is shadowed by my own troubles in this moment…

1. Saramanda Swigart says:
  
  December 6, 2021 at 2:57 pm
  
  Truly sorry you did not like them. I do my best. They are from the heart, anyway, and I hope to continually improve as a writer, but the journey is asymptotic.
  
2. Ben Weakley says:
  
  December 6, 2021 at 7:50 pm
  
  “how to locate i / when i / am both tree / and ivy?” – wow! Loved both poems because of language like this. The extended metaphor of the tree and the ivy that transitions from cloak to embrace to stranglehold as the poem moves toward its conclusion; the harsh music in the lines ” i overturn the junk / drawer of my / white/middle-class / life and take stock / rifling…”; the first person singular shrinking in a loss of self; all of “the small i” is powerful, fierce, and moving. “Reckoning” is beautiful from the form to the visceral image of “pull(ing) out this blighted story by the roots”. Love the photo “By the Roots” as well, it speaks to both poems in a complementary and evocative way.
  
  Thank you for sharing this!
  
Andria Williams says:

December 8, 2021 at 4:17 pm

I love “I am trained to make murder invisible/ but understories cling.”

liam says:

December 9, 2021 at 12:00 pm

I’ve been signing my name in lower-case for decades, so small i was right in my lane. I’m with Ben that
“and the small i—
how to locate i
when i
am both tree
and ivy?”

is a great line that’s been set up by the anecdote that becomes allegory, as is characteristic of much contemporary poetry. As a white american man of privilege, i too am ivy and tree.