Christian Anton Gerard
Writing Hand
The winter-time’s when I pull the dead
grass from the garden bed because the spiders are dead
or have moved to other haunting grounds
in my mind as I sit down in the dirt
and the mint leaves come off their stalks
inch by inch while I pull the dead from the earth.
How often I’ve wandered into gardens or woods
and thought how near to nature I am. How often
I have sat watching a clover grow with the same attention
I give to confessing my obsessive compulsion
near the knife-block, as I imagine pulling my own dead
from myself. How it would look, the paring knife stuck
in my thigh, the warm blood tricking me into calling it life.
Come now. Blood is no more life than a cloud resembling
a goose is a goose. My fingerprint ridges are filled with
whatever makes mint smell like mint. What a condition.
Hands that have damaged. Hands unafraid, ripping clover
from the ground. Hands delighting in the discord
struck by the bee’s sting as it crawls from underneath
a clover’s leaves. I sat to weed, to make this garden
a thing more beautiful than nature could have made.
I sat striving for what should be and could be, but
the tiny bee, its stinger in my green thumb, its body
writhing, burying itself before me reminds me
my making a golden world means accepting the fallen
world, where I live. If this garden is my trying to make
another nature, then I must delight in my throbbing thumb,
the pain that happens, when though I pray,
I mistake my sounds of penance for forgiveness.
Defense of Poetry XI; or The Poet Explaining Himself
I’d forgotten the moon last night would rise
like most other nights because nights come, dark
and droning on for hours while I’m scared
I’ve forgotten how to make a sentence or
because the moon’s poetry’s bright cliché,
like when I tell someone I’m a poet–
I just love that Billy Collins’ poems, or
I don’t know anything about poetry–
as if we’re talking about zooplankton
or what uranium’s half-life might mean.
Take the moon’s picture tonight, I should say,
show it to a stranger, ask do you see
grief or grievance, joy or do we sometimes
gamble for the impossible because?
Christian Anton Gerard’s first book is Wilmot Here, Collect For Stella (WordTech Communications' CW Books imprint, 2014). He’s received Pushcart Prize nominations, scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and an Academy of American Poets Prize. Some of his recent poems appear or are forthcoming in Post Road, Weave, Redivider, Pank, Orion, Smartish Pace and elsewhere. Gerard is currently an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith. Find him on the web at www.Christianantongerard.com
Return to July 2014 Edition
The winter-time’s when I pull the dead
grass from the garden bed because the spiders are dead
or have moved to other haunting grounds
in my mind as I sit down in the dirt
and the mint leaves come off their stalks
inch by inch while I pull the dead from the earth.
How often I’ve wandered into gardens or woods
and thought how near to nature I am. How often
I have sat watching a clover grow with the same attention
I give to confessing my obsessive compulsion
near the knife-block, as I imagine pulling my own dead
from myself. How it would look, the paring knife stuck
in my thigh, the warm blood tricking me into calling it life.
Come now. Blood is no more life than a cloud resembling
a goose is a goose. My fingerprint ridges are filled with
whatever makes mint smell like mint. What a condition.
Hands that have damaged. Hands unafraid, ripping clover
from the ground. Hands delighting in the discord
struck by the bee’s sting as it crawls from underneath
a clover’s leaves. I sat to weed, to make this garden
a thing more beautiful than nature could have made.
I sat striving for what should be and could be, but
the tiny bee, its stinger in my green thumb, its body
writhing, burying itself before me reminds me
my making a golden world means accepting the fallen
world, where I live. If this garden is my trying to make
another nature, then I must delight in my throbbing thumb,
the pain that happens, when though I pray,
I mistake my sounds of penance for forgiveness.
Defense of Poetry XI; or The Poet Explaining Himself
I’d forgotten the moon last night would rise
like most other nights because nights come, dark
and droning on for hours while I’m scared
I’ve forgotten how to make a sentence or
because the moon’s poetry’s bright cliché,
like when I tell someone I’m a poet–
I just love that Billy Collins’ poems, or
I don’t know anything about poetry–
as if we’re talking about zooplankton
or what uranium’s half-life might mean.
Take the moon’s picture tonight, I should say,
show it to a stranger, ask do you see
grief or grievance, joy or do we sometimes
gamble for the impossible because?
Christian Anton Gerard’s first book is Wilmot Here, Collect For Stella (WordTech Communications' CW Books imprint, 2014). He’s received Pushcart Prize nominations, scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and an Academy of American Poets Prize. Some of his recent poems appear or are forthcoming in Post Road, Weave, Redivider, Pank, Orion, Smartish Pace and elsewhere. Gerard is currently an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith. Find him on the web at www.Christianantongerard.com
Return to July 2014 Edition