Poem-A-Day: In the Back Seat of History by Mary Biddinger

In the Back Seat of History by Mary Biddinger     We lived in Gettysburg like vagrant prospectors, driven by the scent of knees and a profound love of dimes   if by dimes you meant knees, and we were always kneeling before one altar or another, making sacrifice   as you called it. Your trunk was full of coffee filters and insoles. Somebody stole your brother's bike   and that was all the reason needed. We broke our melon the old fashioned way, which is to say   not at all. You'd kneecap that bastard. I knelt in front of you kneading the last few pages of John Donne's   Holy Sonnets like an exquisite loaf of historically-derived rye. When I got to the end I wasn't sure   if breathing was polite, or necessary. Later I stood in the alley wearing red tatters of high school.   Our motel was packed with the cry from a broken television, the kind that lived between your ribs.       Copyright © 2013 by Mary Biddinger. Used with permission of the author.   About This Poem "I often find poetry in the convergence of memory and the present. For example, my parents took me to Gettysburg in 1983. I saw a shirtless man with long hair who was breaking a melon against the side of a metal garbage can. It wasn't until years later that I pondered exactly what that melon would taste like on such a day."    --Mary Biddinger Most Recent Book by Biddinger O Holy Insurgency (Black Lawrence Press, 2013)           July 11, 2013 Mary Biddinger's most recent collection of poems is O Holy Insurgency (Black Lawrence Press, 2013). She lives in Akron, Ohio, and teaches at the University of Akron. Related Poems Mississippi: Origins by Anna Journey Mnemonic by Li-Young Lee forgetting something by Nick Flynn Poem-A-Day Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-A-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends.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.

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