{"id":43,"date":"2013-09-24T19:29:57","date_gmt":"2013-09-24T19:29:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/english.wisc.edu\/wallace\/?page_id=43"},"modified":"2017-11-14T19:58:42","modified_gmt":"2017-11-14T19:58:42","slug":"selected-poems","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/dept.english.wisc.edu\/wallace\/?page_id=43","title":{"rendered":"Selected Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"

Selected Poems<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Each of these poems is discussed by Wallace in an article included on this website. To access the article, use the link provided.<\/p>\n

Oranges<\/strong><\/p>\n

This morning I eat an orange.
\nIt is sour and juicy.\u00a0 My mouth
\nwill tingle all day.
\nOutside, it is cold.\u00a0 The trees
\ndo not anticipate their leaves.
\nWhen I breathe into my hand I smell
\noranges.<\/p>\n

I walk across the lake.
\nIce fishermen twitch their poles until
\nperch flicker the surface, quick
\nand bright as orange slices.
\nThe sun ripens in the sky.
\nThe wind turns thin and citrus,
\nthe day precise, fragile.<\/p>\n

My mustache and eyelashes freeze.
\nWhen I arrive at your house
\nyou are friendly as a fruit seller.
\nWe peel off our clothes, slice through
\nthat wordy rind.
\nWhen I lift my fingers to your lips:
\noranges.<\/p>\n

To Article<\/a> | Back to Top<\/a><\/p>\n

The Facts of Life<\/strong><\/p>\n

She wonders how people get babies.
\nSuddenly vague and distracted,
\nwe talk about “making love.”
\nShe’s six and unsatisfied, finds
\nour limp answers unpersuasive.
\nEmbarrassed, we stiffen, and try again,
\nthis time exposing the stark naked words:
\npenis, vagina, sperm, womb, and egg.
\nShe thinks we’re pulling her leg.
\nWe decide that it’s time
\nto get passionate and insist.
\nBut she’s angry, disgusted.
\nWhy do we always make fun of her?
\nWhy do we lie?
\nWe sigh, try cabbages, storks.
\nShe smiles.\u00a0 That’s more like it.
\nWe talk on into the night, trying
\nmagic seeds, good fairies, God . . .<\/p>\n

To Article<\/a> | Back to Top<\/a><\/p>\n

At Chet’s Feed & Seed<\/strong><\/p>\n

The man who is telling me about the chicken
\nstationery he makes in his backyard trailer
\nleaves with his beaky wife.
\nTheir voices clabber and scratch.
\nIn the corner, guinea hens, $1.50 each,
\nscutter and strut in jerky grandeur.
\nClyde is pleased to meet me.\u00a0 He
\nshakes my hand, a 200 lb. feed bag
\nperched on his left shoulder, his big
\narm, glistening in its sleeveless T-shirt,
\na mixture of roast corn, oats, molasses, wheat.
\nThe bald woman tied up to her chihuahua,
\nher son still in Vietnam with the marines,
\nadjusts her rheumy teeth.
\nShe says he’ll be coming back.
\nChet says he will, pulls a pencil out of his ear
\nand takes a dollar off her bill.
\nShe grunts. Chet bleats at Clyde
\nwho whinnies under the weight of the feed sack.
\nThe chicken man and his wife come back.
\nThey’re looking at me.
\nThe smell of feed and goodwill is sweet.
\nI feel so stupid I could almost moo
\nwith approval.\u00a0 So I do.<\/p>\n

To Article<\/a> | Back to Top<\/a><\/p>\n

The Hell Mural: Panel I<\/strong><\/p>\n

Iri and Toshi Maruki are “painting the bomb.”
\nTheir painting, they say, will comfort the souls of the dead.
\n“It’s a dreadful cruel scene of great beauty,”
\nToshi says.\u00a0 “The face may be deformed but there’s kindness
\nin a finger or a breast, even in hell.”
\nThe Hell Mural spreads over the floor.<\/p>\n

Iri stretches naked on the floor,
\npainting.\u00a0 He remembers Hiroshima after the bomb–
\nthe bodies stacked up, arms outstretched toward hell,
\nnothing he could see that was not dead,
\nnothing that cared at all for human kindness,
\nnothing that wept at such terror, such beauty.<\/p>\n

Now a brush stroke here, a thick wash there, and beauty
\nwrithes and stretches from the canvas floor.
\nHe wants his art to “collaborate with kindness,”
\nhe wants his art to “uncover the bomb.”
\nBut no lifetime’s enough to paint all the dead
\nor put all those who belong there in hell.<\/p>\n

“Hitler and Truman,” he says, “of course are in hell.”
\nBut even those of us who live for beauty
\nare in hell, no less so than the dead.”
\n(He paints himself and Toshi on the floor.)
\n“All of us who cannot stop the bomb
\nare now in hell.\u00a0 It’s no kindness<\/p>\n

to say different.\u00a0 It’s no kindness
\nto insist on heaven; there’s only hell.”
\nToshi adds bees and maggots to the bomb,
\nand birds, cats, her pregnant niece, the beauty
\nof severed breast and torn limb on the killing floor.
\n“In Hiroshima,” she says, “we crossed a river on the dead<\/p>\n

bodies stacked up like a bridge.\u00a0 Now the dead
\nsouls must be comforted with kindness.
\nCome walk in your socks across our floor,
\nwalk on the canvas. (A little dirt in hell
\nalmost improves it.)\u00a0 Can you see the beauty
\nof this torso, that ear lobe, this hip bone of the bomb?”<\/p>\n

Iri and Toshi Maruki, in “Hell,” are painting the bomb,
\nthe mural on their floor alive with the thriving dead.
\nCome walk on their kindness, walk on their troublesome beauty.<\/p>\n

To Article<\/a> | Back to Top<\/a><\/p>\n

In the Amish Bakery<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don’t know why what comes to mind
\nwhen I imagine my wife and daughters,
\noff on a separate vacation
\nin the family car,
\ncrashing–no survivors–
\nin one of those Godless snowstorms
\nof Northern Illinois,
\nis that Amish bakery
\nin Sauk County, Wisconsin, where
\non Saturday mornings in summer,
\nwe used to go–
\nall powdered sugar and honey in
\nthe glazed caramel air.\u00a0 And O
\nthe browned loaves rising,
\nthe donuts, buns, and pies, the ripe
\nstrawberry stain of an oven burn
\non the cheek of one of the wives.
\nAnd outside in the yard
\nthat goddamned trampoline
\nwhere we’d imagine them–
\nthe whole blessed family in
\ntheir black topcoats and frocks,
\ntheir severe hair and beards,
\ntheir foolish half-baked grins,
\nso much flour dust and leaven–
\nleaping all together on
\ntheir stiff sweet legs toward heaven.<\/p>\n

To Article<\/a> | Back to Top<\/a><\/p>\n

Hardware<\/strong><\/p>\n

My father always knew the secret
\nname of everything–
\nstove bolt and wing nut,
\nset screw and rasp, ratchet
\nwrench, band saw, and ball
\npeen hammer.\u00a0 He was my
\ntour guide and translator
\nthrough that foreign country
\nwith its short-tempered natives
\nin their crew cuts and tattoos,
\nwho suffered my incompetence
\nwith gruffness and disgust.
\nPay attention, he would say,
\nand you’ll learn a thing or two.<\/p>\n

Now it’s forty years later,
\nand I’m packing up his tools
\n(If you know the proper
\nnames of things you’re never
\nat a loss) tongue-tied, incompetent,
\nmy hands and heart full
\nof doohickeys and widgets,
\nwatchamacallits, thingamabobs.<\/p>\n

To Article<\/a> | Back to Top<\/a><\/p>\n

The Friday Night Fights<\/strong><\/p>\n

Every Friday night we watched the fights.
\nMe, ten years old and stretched out on the couch;
\nmy father, in his wheelchair, looking on
\nas Rocky Marciano, Sonny Liston, Floyd Patterson
\nfought and won the battles we could not.
\nHim, twenty-nine, and beat up with disease;
\nme, counting God among my enemies
\nfor what he’d done to us.\u00a0 We never touched.<\/p>\n

But in between the rounds we’d sing how we’d
\nLook sharp!\u00a0 Feel sharp! & Be sharp! with Gillette
\nand Howard Cosell, the Bela Lugosi of boxing.
\nOut in the kitchen, my mother never understood
\nour need for blood, how this was as close as we’d get
\nto love–bobbing and weaving, feinting and sparring.<\/p>\n

To Article<\/a> | Back to Top<\/a><\/p>\n

Fielding<\/strong><\/p>\n

I like to see him out in center field
\nfifty years ago, at twenty-two,
\nwaiting for that towering fly ball–
\nAugust, Williamsburg, a lazy afternoon–
\ndreaming how he’d one day be a pro
\nand how he’d have a wide-eyed son to throw
\na few fat pitches to.\u00a0 An easy catch.
\nHe drifts back deeper into a small patch<\/p>\n

of weeds at the fence and waits.\u00a0 In a second or two
\nthe ball is going to stagger in the air,
\nthe future take him to his knees:\u00a0 wheelchair,
\nMS, paralysis, grief.\u00a0 But for now
\nhe’s camped out under happiness.\u00a0 Life is good.
\nFor at least one second more he owns the world.<\/p>\n

To Article<\/a> | Back to Top<\/a><\/p>\n

The McPoem<\/strong><\/p>\n

I must confess that I, too, like it:
\nthe poem that’s fried up flat and fast with condiments
\non a sesame seed bun.\u00a0 Steamy, grease-spattered,
\nand juicy, fluent with salt, piping hot
\nfrom the grill, glazed with bubbling oil.
\nA poem you can count on always to be
\nthe same–small, domestic, fun for the whole
\nfamily.\u00a0 Economical.\u00a0 American.\u00a0 Free<\/p>\n

of culinary pretension.\u00a0 I used to have to ride
\nten miles or so out to the suburbs to find
\none back in 1956 when poems were
\nmore expensive, reserved for connoisseurs.
\nNow everyone is welcome to the griddle.
\n(I also like toads, and all this fiddle.)<\/p>\n

To Article<\/a> | Back to Top<\/a><\/p>\n

Blessings<\/strong><\/p>\n

occur.
\nSome days I find myself
\nputting my foot in
\nthe same stream twice;
\nleading a horse to water
\nand making him drink.
\nI have a clue.
\nI can see the forest
\nfor the trees.<\/p>\n

All around me people
\nare making silk purses
\nout of sows’ ears,
\ngetting blood from turnips,
\nbuilding Rome in a day.
\nThere’s a business
\nlike show business.
\nThere’s something new
\nunder the sun.<\/p>\n

Some days misery
\nno longer loves company;
\nit puts itself out of its.
\nThere’s rest for the weary.
\nThere’s turning back.
\nThere are guarantees.
\nI can be serious.
\nI can mean that.
\nYou can quite
\nput your finger on it.<\/p>\n

Some days I know
\nI am long for this world.
\nI can go home again.
\nAnd when I go
\nI can
\ntake it with me.<\/p>\n

To Article<\/a> | Back to Top<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Selected Poems Each of these poems is discussed by Wallace in an article included on this website. To access the article, use the link provided. Oranges This morning I eat an orange. It is sour and juicy.\u00a0 My mouth will … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-43","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dept.english.wisc.edu\/wallace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/43","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dept.english.wisc.edu\/wallace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dept.english.wisc.edu\/wallace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dept.english.wisc.edu\/wallace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dept.english.wisc.edu\/wallace\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/dept.english.wisc.edu\/wallace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/43\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135,"href":"https:\/\/dept.english.wisc.edu\/wallace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/43\/revisions\/135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dept.english.wisc.edu\/wallace\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}