James Grinwis
After Films
There is a tavern after,
one is all shaken up and he talks
about the director’s use of color, and mountain
ranges in Alaska, and brothers-in-law who go off
to shoot bears, and the tonal structures
of Arvo Part, and the umlaut and how
“party” and “bar” are the same words
in English and German, and whether the black is real
black, and how the scene where brown crossed
green changed when she opened the draperies,
and the little girl died and the skier kept falling
farther and farther away, and suddenly there’s a son
to be held and smiled at, and the skier keeps
falling and the girl in the red dress keeps falling
and the girl in green keeps falling and the world
has become a giant James Dickey poem,
and how Beowulf was Beowulf, and how we are
capable of great thinking and beauty and
the worst badness, and the sun keeps rising
and the sun is warm over the mountains,
and the mountains have become little modules
of loss, and loss has suddenly contained itself
like the skull of a dog or the skull of a bird
or a skull with a candle inside it, or a candle
with the face of a skull, the light there
still going and going, the death there,
and how the cold makes everything crisp,
contemplative even, a lonely sword-flash,
a road that’s grey, a very grey and snow-flecked
and largely un-driven road.
James Grinwis lives in Northampton, MA, where he co-edits Bateau Press. His work has appeared in a wide range of literary journals and reviews since 1998. He is the author of THE CITY FROM NOME (National Poetry Review Press) and EXHIBIT OF FORKING PATHS (National Poetry Series/ Coffee House).
Return to November 2013 Edition
There is a tavern after,
one is all shaken up and he talks
about the director’s use of color, and mountain
ranges in Alaska, and brothers-in-law who go off
to shoot bears, and the tonal structures
of Arvo Part, and the umlaut and how
“party” and “bar” are the same words
in English and German, and whether the black is real
black, and how the scene where brown crossed
green changed when she opened the draperies,
and the little girl died and the skier kept falling
farther and farther away, and suddenly there’s a son
to be held and smiled at, and the skier keeps
falling and the girl in the red dress keeps falling
and the girl in green keeps falling and the world
has become a giant James Dickey poem,
and how Beowulf was Beowulf, and how we are
capable of great thinking and beauty and
the worst badness, and the sun keeps rising
and the sun is warm over the mountains,
and the mountains have become little modules
of loss, and loss has suddenly contained itself
like the skull of a dog or the skull of a bird
or a skull with a candle inside it, or a candle
with the face of a skull, the light there
still going and going, the death there,
and how the cold makes everything crisp,
contemplative even, a lonely sword-flash,
a road that’s grey, a very grey and snow-flecked
and largely un-driven road.
James Grinwis lives in Northampton, MA, where he co-edits Bateau Press. His work has appeared in a wide range of literary journals and reviews since 1998. He is the author of THE CITY FROM NOME (National Poetry Review Press) and EXHIBIT OF FORKING PATHS (National Poetry Series/ Coffee House).
Return to November 2013 Edition