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01-22-2019
Blas Falconer
A Love Poem
I fell asleep to the sound of water moving in the dark.
In the morning, the river, what was left of the snow, filled the window in my hotel room, rushing faster than I’d imagined.
To be here, among the foothills, and not there was like wanting, all at once, to hold the same stone in each hand.
And all at once, there was a center where there hadn’t been, the way there seems a center in a field where crows roost in winter.
Call it clarity, or the footing a fisherman finds on the bank, whipping his line in the air above his head.
What I wanted was not possible: After the birds have gone, the great nests of leaves and limbs high among leaves and limbs.
He catches the fish he’s wanted all day, pulls the hook from its mouth, and lets it go.
Which I must remember and remember to tell you.
Amor Fati
We wrestled in
the basement, drunk,
my head pressed
hard into the coarse,
blue rug, windows dark.
Upstairs,
my mother stood
at the stove. Soon,
my body seemed
to say, turning
under you. It was
1986: the fire
at Dupont Plaza, the
Human
Immunodeficiency
Virus, the
Challenger falling in
pieces over
the Atlantic. You
pinned me
there, bent
so close, I thought
we might
kiss, your shirt
stretched by
my long pull,
and I held on
with both fists.
Study of Boy and Ocean
The boy on the boat holds one foot
over the water, certain it
will lift him up—
not to test so much
as to draw the spirit, housed
in the body, out. When Peter fell
into the sea, what made
him doubt? Grace
can only enter where
there’s a void
to receive it, says
Weil, and it
is grace which makes
this void—the sun
so bright
when you sink, you can’t
see where to go,
and going down
becomes another way.
-from Forgive This Body This Failure, Four Way Books 2018, selected by POW Spring 2019 Guest Editor, Vandana Khanna
PROMPT: As in Blas Falconer's "Amor Fati," explore a childhood memory that nags at you, an instance from your younger life that at the time might not have seemed significant but, in retrospect, shaped who you are today. Keep the poem short and to the point. Use short lines, internal rhyme, and imagery that places the reader in space and time. As always, have fun.
BIO: Blas Falconer is the author of Forgive the Body This Failure, The Foundling Wheel and A Question of Gravity and Light as well as the co-editor of two anthologies, Mentor and Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets and The Other Latin@: Writing Against a Singular Identity. The recipient of a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award from Poets and Writers, he teaches in San Diego State University’s MFA program. Read more at https://blasfalconer.com.
