Poetry / Evie Shockley
:: morning: what you knew when it was quiet ::
—sometimes the light leans
into the mountain
the grass yellow
in the curved green dark of trees
the mountain meadow stretches
belly up to the sun
sometimes fear is the only shadow
you are as able as a cedar an un-
imported native plant
before the light knows its power
finds its fist
it places its warm palm
along the mountainside
and everything green of the mountain
reaches up
sometimes fear is only the shadow
of your reaching—
:: in the california mountains, far from shelby
county, alabama and even farther from
the supreme court building, the black poet
seeks the low-down from a kindred entity ::
seep-spring monkey flower, growing
up from the scorched earth of last
year’s planned burn: looks like you,
too, know how to get what you need
under cover of darkness. sunshine’s
only half the story. when light becomes
fire, we reach down and let our roots
sustain us till the topsoil’s ready for
our comeback. we’re all aware there’s
no justice in drought: and whoever
says this weather’s nobody’s fault has
just bought a bridge they hope to resell.
like you, we’re perennial in warmer
climes. we’ve also been called monkey,
and didn’t get to vote on that either.
so: can we pay a poll tax with pollen?
From the writer
:: Account ::
These two poems were among the gifts I received from my participation in the Squaw Valley Community of Writers Poetry Workshop in June 2013. We gathered for a week, there in the Tahoe Basin of the Sierra Nevada mountains, to recharge, expand, and deepen our connection to poetry by writing a new poem-draft each day and sharing those drafts the following morning for a quick round of focused and generous feedback. Being in that space—not only an amazing community, but a beautiful and (for me) unfamiliar landscape—tends to bring out of me work that lies in the more metaphysical and attuned-to-“nature” zones of my poetic spectrum. Among the many voices that I gratefully heard and absorbed that week, Brenda Hillman’s and Sharon Olds’s were noteworthy (conscious) “influences” on the poems I wrote. Also, the spirit of Lucille Clifton, who is a part of my earlier memories of this place, looms large there and encourages particular kinds of bravery, humor, and linguistic economy. Though the workshop is a retreat, of sorts, news of the world beyond the mountains did reach us, and an especially infuriating event (amidst other happier stories) sparked one of these poems. Lastly—and with a nod to NourbeSe Philip and Robert Hayden, whose work was central to the craft talk I gave that week—I’ll note that these poems are marked by my ongoing interest in the possibilities of form and structure in poetry.
Evie Shockley is the author of the new black (Wesleyan University Press, 2011), awarded the 2012 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry, and a half-red sea (Carolina Wren Press, 2006), as well as the critical study Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry (University of Iowa Press, 2011). Her writing appears widely in journals and anthologies, recently including Contemporary Literature, Mandorla, Tin House, and Russell Atkins: On the Life & Work of a 20th Century Master. She is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University.