There’s a lot packed into this episode, Slushies, including sibilance and balancing gravity with a light touch. Differing perspectives and the resonance of history, both real and mythical, cascade through a trio of poems by Danielle Roberts. Jason worries that his erudition has collapsed momentarily, Kathy loves the rush of wanting to immediately re-read a poem, and Samantha reminds us of an Anne Carson line: “Aristotle says that metaphor causes the mind to experience itself in the act of making a mistake.” Oh, and Marion brings to life the idea of hearing a baby’s cries in the ceiling when she recounts living in the apartment below a family with newborn triplets!

Links to things we discuss that you may dig:

Jeanann Verlee’s Helen Considers Leaving Troy

George Eliot’s Middlemarch

Anne Carson’s Essay on What I Think About Most

Elizabeth Bishop’s Collected Letters

Jason Schneiderman’s How the Sonnet Turns: From a Fold to a Helix, APR Volume 49, Issue 3

British Antarctic Survey: Ice cores and climate change

The Norton Reader

Smartless Podcast (Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, Will Arnett)

This episode is brought to you by our sponsor Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist is A.M.Mills whose song “Spaghetti with Loretta” now opens our show. 

At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Marion Wrenn, Samantha Neugebauer, and Jason Schneiderman

Danielle Roberts is a queer poet from California. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Atlanta Review, DMQ Review, Okay Donkey, Prairie Schooner, Reed Magazine & others. When not writing poetry, she can be found drinking too much tea & pestering the nearest cat. Read more of her at sonnetscribbler.com.

Socials: Instagram: @sonnetscribbler

How can I leave this behind?

after Jeanann Verlee’s Helen Considers Leaving Troy

after a floral gin cocktail

              Do I want to live and die my whole life here—

              buried in county lines—or is it time

              to stretch the map? There’s more

              to plan than simply running away.

while holding my niece

              Picking up the baby doesn’t help:

              I smell her hair & wonder if she thinks

              of me when I’m out of sight. Will she know?

              Her eyes stare into the distance

              along with mine. Maybe she travels

              in her dreams. Maybe she lives

              elsewhere.

while eating dinner

              Gorging myself on routine, I chew bread & think

              about the bagels in New York. I live these sour-

              dough rituals—oven baked in centuries

              of families. A young tradition bound by water

              on all sides. They say it’s in the water.

              Doubtful, I gnaw on my nails.

when people ask if I’ll have kids

              Come on, Karen—I just blew up

              my life & you’re asking if I’m ready

              to be a sacred vessel? The only answer

              I can give is to flee far away

              from anyone who had dreams

              for me or thought I could be

              marriage material. Go where

              all folks care about is which street

              I live above in the gridlocked graph

              or whether I’m walking fast enough. Blend.

              It would be easier than questions of barreness.

when my ex wants to get back together

              Absolutely not.

from the freeway exit

              Behind the wheel of my car, I carve trenches

              again—circle and retrace my path—map

              the small universe on foot, pace my cage.

              Maybe I take to the night sky

              or simply head east until I hit water.

              Gorges and grooves heal, scarred

              cutting board life. Do I keep driving?

              Where do I even go from here?

              These dreams that weren’t mine

              festering in my wake. What city takes

              such hazardous rot? How do I leave

              my family behind? How

              do I tell them I’m already gone?

Extracting memories[1]

Speak to me in layered tongues of bitten snow, slow

molars carved with frost collected in the valleys between your teeth. The scientist bores a core—

plucks the long memory from each glacier—this meter holds your first bicycle ride, this

a bridal veil of volcanic ash from Pompeii, six cylinders of centuries trespass

the sterile air—blink at the unforgiving sun. From the dentist chair, you look

up at the light and this persistent body shrinks—cracked with age

and use. Our indestructible jaws crumble with heat, losing

enameled eons to inaction, forgetting to stitch our gums

with floss. It’s far too late to mend our habits

now: best to preserve what we can. Each

line, a thought pulled out of context—

precious archive of time before tales.

We transcribe the answers to

our final test without

any chance of

knowing the

questions.

Reassurance

1—

My cat startles & I tell her nothing

bad is happening, but

we both know that’s a lie

on a large enough scale.

She hears the neighbors’ doors

slam, the child in the ceiling crying

like an injured mouse. She knows footfalls

on the landing lead to the uninvited

lead to us coaxing her to accept

strangers in her home. She knows

the rush of sirens down Oak or shouts

from the narrow park must mean something

in the same way we all know

that one thing always leads

to another.

She turns a pale eye towards me as if to say

just because it’s not happening to me

doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

2—

As we wade into the cold mountain

lake, my sister promises me

nothing’s going to touch your feet—maybe

some grass or a fish, but I’ve never seen anything bad

here. She shifts the baby to her other hip & walks

deeper. Her husband rows away from the widening rings

of sunscreen filming the top of the swampy water, oil slick

of caution. I know she loves me.

Later, I scramble onto the inflatable raft & hold

the baby & my breath. My sister stays rooted

in the water—extracting the implanted

leeches from between my toes—doesn’t

glance down at her own feet. Not even once.

Her husband saw the signposts on the shore & told

no one. He thought they didn’t apply anymore:

he’s never noticed anything in the waters.

3—

My boss sends a message before an important meeting

to ask if I can still lead in light of the news. I reassure him

yes, I’m in California—I’m not affected for now.

In the crowded room,

the men make small talk,

but have nothing to say.

[1] Ice cores and climate change - British Antarctic Survey