Force Drift (VII)
and then
a sudden
and catastrophic
world
you a subtle
body
driven
through
fear
up harsh
walling
driven
under
ego
down harsh
futility
you see
it when
they Mutt
and Jeff
let
seeing in
we know
all
is
power
you mere
body
bare
life
in
isolation
with
threat and
incentive
coffee
a meal
shower
a letter
asylum
*
“touch, too, is an infinite
system of communication,” she said,
floating in the pool, and traced an arc
along the light wave surface then my arm,
“each living gesture precarious
which is the root of a latin prayer.”
Copyright © 2020 by Jeffrey Pethybridge. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 5, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.
“This poem comes from a book manuscript written against the torture program of the Bush (43) administration, and incorporates language from the documentary archive often called the ‘Torture Memos’ that underwrote and authorized those war-crimes; for example ‘isolation,’ ‘ego down harsh,’ and ‘we know all’ were among techniques used at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and other sites of interrogation. The book began with a problem and question: since there will be no true judicial or political reckoning for the authors and agents of the torture program, can cultural forms such as poetry embody an alternative, albeit lesser, form of accountability? The quoted phrases in the second section of the poem are refracted citations from the artists Valentina Desideri and Rosa Alcalá respectively.”
—Jeffrey Pethybridge
Jeffrey Pethybridge
Jeffrey Pethybridge is the author of Striven, the Bright Treatise (Noemi Press, 2013). He teaches in the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University where he serves as Director of the Summer Writing Program. He lives in Denver.