When to break a line, Slushies. And why? What’s the shape your poem takes, and how does the poem’s form serve its complexities, subtleties, and heart? Three poems by Karl Meade are up for consideration in this episode of The Slush Pile, and they call the editors into conversation about trauma in literature, narrative (in)coherence as craft, and the pleasurable risks of stair-stepped stanzas. Poet L.J. Sysko joins the conversation on this  episode  of The Slush Pile as we discuss “Beach Fall,” “Christmas Break,” and “Doom Eager.” (If a tree falls in the woods, Slushies. Ammiright?)

At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Marion Wrenn, L. J. Sysko, Jason Schneiderman, Samantha Neugebauer, Alex J. Tunney

Karl Meade’s work been published in many literary magazines, a few of which he didn’t even donate heavily to, or previously serve as editor—including Literary Review of Canada, Tusculum Review, Arc Poetry Magazine, Grain Magazine, Chronogram, Umbrella Factory Magazine, Contemporary Verse 2, Event Magazine, The Fiddlehead, Open Letter, Under the Sun, and Dandelion. His work has also been mistakenly longlisted for four CBC Literary Prizes, shortlisted for The Malahat Review’s Open Season Creative Nonfiction Award, and Arc Poetry Magazine’s Poem of the Year. His novel, Odd Jobs, written as a solemn literary manifesto, was a finalist for the Foreword Reviews Book of the Year for Humor, and an iTunes Top 20 Arts and Literature podcast—“Laugh Out Loud,” one listener said of this grave work.

Karl’s chapbook “Doom Eager” has just been released in September 2023 by Raven Chapbooks, just in time for us to publish this podcast, which has waited longer than it should for release! 

Author website: www.karlmeade.com

Guest Editor: L.J. Sysko

L.J. Sysko's work has been published in Voicemail Poems, The Pinch, Ploughshares, Rattle, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. She is the author of a poetry chapbook, BATTLEDORE (Finishing Line Press, New Women's Voices series). Poetry honors include several Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg awards, two fellowships from Delaware's Division of the Arts, and poetry finalist recognition from The Fourth River, The Pinch, and Soundings East. Sysko holds an MFA in poetry from New England College.

X: @lj_sysko

Instagram: @lesliesysko

Facebook: @lesliesysko

Author website: http://www.ljsysko.com

beach fall

for Holli and Terry

Mountain to stone, prairie to sand, redwood to ash,

from here I can see the heart of the sea, but not the beach

he fell on. I can see the picture

window you sit in—waiting, watching the shore, iPad in lap, short-haired

Flossy at your side, the one who dug your dad’s

water bottle from under him. I don’t know why

you brought his suitcase to his wake

empty—what it was between you. Only he knew the words

you could not say. The doctors’ words for you—non-verbal, spectral—sent him

back to rage. He said they weren’t worth the hair

on a dead chicken, that aut-ism was just too much self for them to take

from you. He knew what his raging

love could do: four hours a night on the couch, talking

through your iPad. He called himself Manitoban, the prairie farm-boy

who watched his dog run away for three days, the rain-man

to lead you out, teach you how to mouth the O, the awe

in Holli. Yes, from here I can see the redwoods

fall, the mountains decay, his sea-bed—

they say all the big hearts of the earth

love where they fall, that his heart stopped

before he hit the beach. But we both know

why his mouth was full of sand.

Christmas break

for Doug and Arlene

The earth heaves, the ice cleaves. Erosion

cuts the heart from every stone, while every night

I watch you drive your family past a starving glacier, turn

from a truck laden with salt. You head off

the head on, take the bumper to the heart, leave

your family straining your lungs’ last

words from the floor of the minivan.

I’m on the floor beneath my desk, straining

to plug in the phone that I will blame for years: why

did I plug it in? Every night

I watch the driver’s stoned eyes, petrified as your broken

daughters in the back. Every night

I piece you all back together: brake, I say, turn

over and over while the glacier leaves

its terminal moraine. I gather the stones,

offer them to the moon, last witness

to your last turn. I turn

to your wife, try to face her head on

with what the earth knows:

core to crust, mouth to lung

the rupture comes, the rupture

stays. Every Christmas

she wakes to the words

brake, turn.

doom eager*

because one of us

took a spike to the lung

              a minivan to the chest

                           hit the beach with his heart

                                         to say nothing of the one

                                                      whose only breath was broken water

because I believe

              the hand, the wound, the moon

                            is how I show you where I fell

                                         through the hole I thought I was

                                                      diving for pearls through the green

                                                                    fuse of ice in my dream of you

                          because I run naked

                                        through the forest on a moonless night

                                                       with a penlight in the hand that broke

                                                       my mother’s heart waning at the seed

                                                                    of light the moon won’t show me

                                                                                   because its dark side calls all of us

                          because I believe

                                        I’ll find your heart in the east

                                                     your marrow in the moon

                                                                    fever just before the sun rises

                                                                                  I’ll swim for it all day forgetting

                                                                                               how the earth turns east south west

                                                                                                                       circling all night forgetting

                                                                                                                                                                                there is no moon

                                                                                                                                                                                in the new moon

                                                    because the only way out

                                                                  is my hand on your chest

                                                                                 I walk the shore all night

                                                                                              dream back the back of the moon

                                                                                                                                                              because the only cure

                                                                                                                                                                                  for the wound

                                                                                                                                                                                     is the wound

*after Ibsen, Graham, Moore: an Icelandic term for the isolation, restlessness, caughtness an artist experiences when sick with an idea