So said my poetry critique group today about the poem below. I hope it gives enough context that even non-fans of the TV drama can enjoy it. I did submit it, just now, with three other recent poems. Cross your fingers!
One thing I learned from slam is to use what's handy from the culture. Connect with the audience first, THEN leap into new space.
The Americans
They have me rooting for the Russians! I text
my sister,
eating oatmeal as snowbank
eats the
window. We’re binging Season One, her
real time on a
flat screen TV, me late night alone
at my desktop.
A deadly epic winter this winter.
Good to wonder
what Paige and Henry will do
when they find
out their parents are spies, plot
a pickup
showing up with a tow chain just in time.
O pull me from
this ditch you vicious vulnerable agents!
Fight for your marriage! Let me see your every wig!
Windchill’s
killing us here and our stupid phones
lay out days of
arctic cold days in advance, outfits
we don’t want
to wear. In the ancient amphitheater
at Epidaurus sound
reached the farthest seats clear
as pillow talk,
the people of the city sitting hip to hip
in the sun, laughing,
crying as one, thrills rippling
(let’s
imagine) around that limestone bowl the day
a figure steps
from the chorus to speak a line
where there
had only ever been lyric hymn
before. Chills I text my sister, Chills when Paige
with pure
American teenaged pissiness extracts
the truth from
her dead-serious parents and they
pronounce for
her their real Russian names:
Mischa Nadezhda.
Love for The Motherland
in every syllable. A little catharsis, yes?
Dionysius and Athena running
hand in hand
along the Mediterranean
shore far
far from the cold war.
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| I love bringing distant and disparate elements into the poem |
