Marilyn Kallet
Word Man
I understand Mary Shelley,
Frankenstein, the desire
to forge a man out of spare
parts, even if things go wrong.
My machinery is made of
words. I want you
here. Instead of an arm,
a line, it’s what
we have. Babies
want.
Adults, too. We jam
the page
With font, fancy
loops. Freud
knew. I bid you:
Come back, come
here. We pay
for charms
and voodoo,
shop for something,
anything. Over-
eat. Want you.
Here. In
my mouth.
Marilyn Kallet is the Knoxville Poet Laureate, and has published 18 books, including How Our Bodies Learned, The Love That Moves Me, and Packing Light: New and Selected Poems, Black Widow Press. She has translated Paul Eluard’s Last Love Poems and Benjamin Péret’s The Big Game. Dr. Kallet is Professor Emerita at the University of Tennessee. She leads a writing residency for the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, in Auvillar, France. She has performed her poems across the United States as well as in France and Poland, as a guest of the U.S. Embassy’s “America Presents” program. Her poetry appeared recently in Plume 7, and is forthcoming in New Voices, an anthology of contemporary voices on antisemitism, as well as in New Letters and North American Review’s “Open Space.”
Return to September 2019 Edition
I understand Mary Shelley,
Frankenstein, the desire
to forge a man out of spare
parts, even if things go wrong.
My machinery is made of
words. I want you
here. Instead of an arm,
a line, it’s what
we have. Babies
want.
Adults, too. We jam
the page
With font, fancy
loops. Freud
knew. I bid you:
Come back, come
here. We pay
for charms
and voodoo,
shop for something,
anything. Over-
eat. Want you.
Here. In
my mouth.
Marilyn Kallet is the Knoxville Poet Laureate, and has published 18 books, including How Our Bodies Learned, The Love That Moves Me, and Packing Light: New and Selected Poems, Black Widow Press. She has translated Paul Eluard’s Last Love Poems and Benjamin Péret’s The Big Game. Dr. Kallet is Professor Emerita at the University of Tennessee. She leads a writing residency for the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, in Auvillar, France. She has performed her poems across the United States as well as in France and Poland, as a guest of the U.S. Embassy’s “America Presents” program. Her poetry appeared recently in Plume 7, and is forthcoming in New Voices, an anthology of contemporary voices on antisemitism, as well as in New Letters and North American Review’s “Open Space.”
Return to September 2019 Edition