August, 1953

1953 –

A nurse gathers up the afterbirth. My mother
    *
had been howling but now could sleep.
    *
By this time I am gone—also gathered up
    *
& wheeled out. Above my jaundiced face the nurses hover.
    *
Outside, a scab commands a city bus. The picketers battle cops
    *
& ten thousand Soviet conscripts in goggles
    *
kneel & cover their eyes. Mushroom cloud above the Gobi,
    *
& slithering toward Stalin's brain, the blood clot
    *
takes its time. Ethel Rosenberg has rocketed
    *
to the afterlife, her hair shooting flame. The afterbirth
    *
is sloshing in a pail, steadied by an orderly who curses
    *
when the elevator doors stay shut: I am soul & body & medical waste
    *
foaming to the sewers of St. Paul. I am not yet aware
    *
of gratitude or shame.
                                I do know the light is everywhere.

Catawba Cotton Mill, 1908

Propping his tripod, Hine remembers
Childhood snowfall in Wisconsin,
Flakes careening in prairie wind,

A red sleigh skimming a frozen lake,
Curlicued breath-mist of two dappled drays.
But this is a blizzard of cotton dust

From the looms & thirty thousand spindles,
Gauze-air, whirlwind of innumerable floaters.
The thermometer reads one hundred & three.

David Wojahn

2014

For the Scribe Gar.Una of Uruk, 3,000 B. C.

—author of the earliest known signature

That arrow & life were homonyms. That his name
Predates all others, incised sunbaked on a slab
Of Eupratian clay. Stylus a broken reed, though it

Carries somehow the bedazzled opalescent mojo
Of transfiguration. The hand which holds it edges right
& reaching the margin circles back, right to left

David Wojahn

2014

Another Epistle to Frank O'Hara

On the Forty-Ninth Birthday of "The Day Lady Died"

It is 3:00 in the torpid New South, three days past Bastille Day & yes
        this is the form you fashioned,
isn't it? Exact & fast & haunted as the opening chords of "Sweet Jane"
        (Mott the Hoople version),
which pulses from the minivan as I drive from shrink to soccer camp, shirtpocket
        staining my new Rx with sweat,

the bank thermometer flashing 103, the day's new record. We still
        use Fahrenheit, Frank
(if I may call you Frank).

David Wojahn

2012

Poems

August, 1953

More by this poet

Catawba Cotton Mill, 1908

For the Scribe Gar.Una of Uruk, 3,000 B. C.

Another Epistle to Frank O'Hara

Poems

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August, 1953

More by this poet

Catawba Cotton Mill, 1908

For the Scribe Gar.Una of Uruk, 3,000 B. C.

Another Epistle to Frank O'Hara

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