September 21, 2020

learned acquiescence

By Kat Myrman 

learned acquiescence

I am domestic
learned from my mother, 
from her mother,
private, distant,
a shadow
I act the part
as time whistles through
one day I plan to be

~kat
A Blackout Poem inspired by poem by Suzanne Buffam, seen below:

Enough
I am wearingdark glasses insidethe house
To match my dark mood.

I have left all the sugar out of the pie.
My rage is a kind of domestic rage.

I learned it from my mother
Who learned it from her mother before her

And so on.
Surely the Greeks had a word for this.

Now surely the Germans do.
The morewords a person knows

To describe her private sufferings
The more distantly she can perceive them.

I repeat the names of all the cities I’ve known
And watch an ant drag its crooked shadow home.

What does it mean to love the lifewe’ve been given?
To act well the part that’s been cast for us?

Wind. Light. Fire. Time.  
A train whistles through the far hills.

One day I plan to be riding it.

Suzanne Buffam, "Enough" from The Irrationalist. Copyright © 2010 by Suzanne Buffam.  Reprinted by permission of Canarium Books.
Source: The Irrationalist (Canarium Books, 2010)

This entry was posted on Monday, September 21st, 2020 at 12:16 pm and tagged with , , , and posted in Blackout Poetry, Poetry, Random Thoughts and Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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