J.P. White
Gratitude
After untold damage, we had come into a time of continuous unclarities.
Pilgrimages, protests, floods, fires, repudiation of the immigrant,
Steady assault of prayer and amygdala, quick kitchen kiss of amnesia,
And the over-remembering of everything by small, dutiful machines.
What was our crime? Too much or too little? Or were we simply
Caught in a backstory we couldn’t possibly unwind for one another?
So much had already been lost on the rim of a volcano, it was hard
To tell the smoke from the unquiet gathering and spilling of wind.
It was as if we now tented our ruin under the fallen carcass of a giant
Who had promised to rule his kingdom without the selling of shadow.
Stray dogs and roosters found their voices and seemed happy enough
With how much garbage was now a smorgasbord of impossible delights.
Who could contain all the fear, the confusion, the anticipation of something
Else that would no longer hurt us? I would like to say I helped bridge
This giddy, charred cavity, but I kept my family on the unlit back stairs
Measuring hunger and threat inside the throats of the circling animals.
Doubt propped me up and considerable uncertainty and this other
Unspoken thing carried by a string of children who raced one another
On our jagged street as if the sun were still lit inside the green stem.
J.P. White is the author of the poetry collections The Sleeper at the Party (Defined Providence Press, 2001), The Salt Hour (The University of Illinois Press, 2001), The Pomegranate Tree Speaks from the Dictator’s Garden, (Holy Cow Press, 1988), and In Pursuit of Wings (Panache Books, 1978). His essays, articles, fiction, reviews, interviews and poetry have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Gettysburg Review, American Poetry Review, Sewanee Review, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, and many other journals and anthologies. He holds a BA from New College (1973), an MA from Colorado State University (1977), and an MFA from Vermont College (1990). He lives on Lake Minnetonka near Minneapolis.
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