Poem-A-Day: A House Divided by Kyle Dargan

Having trouble viewing this email? Click here

A House Divided by Kyle Dargan   On a railroad car in your America, I made the acquaintance of a man who sang a life-song with these lyrics: "Do whatever you can/ to avoid becoming a roofing man." I think maybe you'd deem his tenor elitist, or you'd hear him as falling off working-class key. He sang not from his heart but his pulsing imagination, where every roof is sloped like a spire and Sequoia tall. Who would wish for themselves, another, such a treacherous climb? In your America, a clay-colored colt stomps, its hooves cursing the barn's chronic lean. In your America, blood pulses within the fields, slow-poaching a mill saw's buried flesh. In my America, my father awakens again thankful that my face is not the face returning his glare from above eleven o'clock news murder headlines. In his imagination, the odds are just as convincing that I would be posted on a corner pushing powder instead of poems-- no reflection of him as a father nor me as a son. We were merely born in a city where the rues beyond our doors were the streets that shanghaied souls. To you, my America appears distant, if even real at all. While you are barely visible to me. Yet we continue stealing glances at each other from across the tattered hallways of this overgrown house we call a nation--every minute a new wall erected, a bedroom added beneath its leaking canopy of dreams. We hear the dripping, we feel drafts wrap cold fingers about our necks, but neither you or I trust each other to hold the ladder or to ascend. Copyright © 2013 by Kyle Dargan. Used with permission of the author. About this Poem:   "I took Amtrak from Washington, D.C. to Atlanta for my brother's wedding. I'd never travelled that far south by train. I saw a familiar but antiquated ruralness--another iteration of America. On the return, I grabbed a seat next to a group of Alabamians on their way to Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity. It seemed that, in the moment, there were so many different "Americas" colliding in the coach. While conversing about work over a dining car breakfast, one of the men, Mike Laus, offered a line about roofing someone had passed on to him. It struck me, and provided an entry point for musing on how little we see of, or believe in, each other's Americas."   Kyle Dargan Poetry by Dargan Logorrhea Dementia: A Self-Diagnosis      Poem-A-Day launched in 2006 and features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.   Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org. February 18, 2013 Kyle Dargan is the author of three collections of poetry including, Logorrhea Dementia: A Self-Diagnosis (University of Georgia Press, 2010) and Bouquet of Hungers (University of Georgia Press, 2007). He is an Assistant Professor at American University in Washington, D.C. Related Poems América by Richard Blanco America by Walt Whitman America by Robert Creeley

Forward this email This email was sent to prentice654.allsms@blogger.com by poetnews@poets.org |   Update Profile/Email Address | Instant removal with SafeUnsubscribe™ | Privacy Policy. Academy of American Poets | 75 Maiden Lane | Suite 901 | New York | NY | 10038