This week's Poet of the People is Ed Madden, Ed Madden is a gifted poet and a generous mentor and nurturer across a wide range of our community of poets. He consistently models how to be relevant and present in both the town and gown communities and we are richer for it.
Ed will be reading Sunday at Poetry Church and Tuesday at Historic Columbia
From Ark (Sibling Rivalry, 2016)
Ark
Christmas 1966
The small box is filled with little beasts—
a barn that’s a barge, a boat—the ark’s
ridged sides like boards, a plastic plank,
a deck that drops in fitted slots, but lifted
reveals that zoo of twos—heaped beasts
to be released beneath a glittering tree,
its dove-clipped limbs. Dad’s asleep
in his reclining seat, and crumpled waves
of paper recede as Mom circles the room.
The humming wheel throws light across the walls.
How to lift him
Don’t pick him up by the pits,
which seems easiest. You risk
broken bones, bruised skin.
Instead, once he’s eased up, sits,
shoulders hunched, fee slung
over the edge, lean down for the hug,
your arms under his and around,
hands flat against his back, his arms around
you. This is what you do. Then lift him,
his feet between yours, this timid
dance around, this turn. Tell him
to bend his knees as you ease him
down to the chair, its wheels locked,
set him in slow. Kneel in front
as if to receive his blessing.
Lift each foot to its rest. Wrap
a blanket around him—you’re going out.
Stop at the old flat-front desk,
last hiding place for his cigarettes—
why he wanted up, after all. Stop
at the edge of the porch and lock
the wheels. Make sure he’s in the sun.
Stand silent by, he won’t talk much,
though the lonely cat will,
rubbing its back against the wheels.
Thirst
The nurse said, your father really looks at you
when you walk into the room—
he stares at you,
she said, he must have something to tell you.
But he never tells you.
Later, another hospice worker listened to this story.
She said, no, you know,
sometimes, as we’re leaving this world,
our world contracts to the small space of the room,
to the few things we love.
Your father wasn’t looking at you because he had
something to tell you, no,
he was looking at you because he loved you, she said.
It was near the end, she said,
he was drinking you in.
Poems from A Pooka in Arkansas (Word Works, 2023)
[untitled]
What has been omitted
from the history we learned?
The stubble was plowed under,
sometimes burned.
[untitled]
Sometimes when it’s cold out,
I pull on my dad’s old denim
shirt, warm, worn, the past
a thin jacket, what I have left.
Psalm
after Psalm 23
Tim is my therapist;
I’m learning to trust him.
He motions me to the green sofa;
there’s always bottled water on the table.
He leads me to talk about things
I don’t want to talk about.
If I make my way to the top
of the dark stairs,
he makes a space for talking
and for not talking.
Sometimes the room gets crowded—
my dead father, my distant mother,
all those messages from my brother
I can pull up right there on my phone.
In their presence, he asks,
“What would happen
if you stopped doing your family’s work
of shaming you?”
That question follows me the rest of the day.
From A Story of the City: Poems Occasional and Otherwise (Muddy Ford, 2023)
Postcard: First Baptist Church, Columbia, S.C.
Justitia Virtutum Regina, motto of the City of Columbia
This is where they decided
to divide US, where they said
all men are not equal, where
they pledged allegiance to
the divided states of America
and to the secession for
which they stood, a nation
broken, divisible, with liberty
and justice for some.
Something to declare
July 11, 2018, after William Stafford
The president is overseas this week, that’s the news,
and we’re reading William Stafford in a chilly classroom
and trying to write about where we live now, and how.
Important people are gathered around a big table,
but we sit at our little desks. Sachi talks about what it means
to declare something when you cross a border.
Back home, I know my cat is dying. She’ll amble
stiffly to the door when I return, her blind eyes
wide and bright with what she cannot see.
They say that history is going on somewhere.
Zoe describes her story as a scrap of paper swept
by the wind, litter snagged in a tree.
This is only a little report from a summer arts camp,
where Makenna and Maya and Eva and Micah are writing
about their small, rich lives. We’re here. You can find us here.
A new year
Bert’s outside taking down the strings
of lights, this winter sun bright enough
for a new day, new year. Colleen sent
a thick heart made of seeds—we’ll hang it
in a tree today for birds, for the winter
that persists despite the sun. Last night’s
firewords were gorgeous, though Barry ran back
and forth with his torch to relight them—
the way, sometimes, we have to do for
our little resolutions, for our glorious
dreams, for our tired hearts, when it’s
dark, when it’s still so cold.
UNPUBLISHED POEMS
Epithalamium, backyard wedding
for Mahayla, 20 June 2020
Bert mowed the yard and we spent
some time tidying up, though I know
after next week’s storms there will be
more to do, before the weekend, before
your wedding, before the small service
you asked to have in our backyard.
The mockingbird who takes up a post
every day on the utility pole will sing
for you I’m sure, and I’m certain too
he’ll work in his latest riff, his perfect
soft mimicry of a car alarm going off
in the distance. I will get the words
ready. I’m sorry there’s a big hole
in the yard where we hope to put in
a pond later this summer. But maybe
that’s okay. We’re always trying to make
things better and sometimes that means
a big muddy hole in the middle of it all,
sometimes that means a simple service
in your uncles’ back yard, everyone
standing apart, except for the bride
and groom, maybe your mom and stepdad.
Nathan got the day off, despite the police
being on call right now. I hope he stays
safe this week, his dark skin, his uniform
and gun. I hope I get the words right.
I know you’d hoped for something lovelier,
that wedding in the mountains in October,
but maybe this is best, we don’t know
what things will be like then. May it be
clear and sunny on the day, may the
magnolia still be wearing its perfume, may
the yard be good enough, may this be good
enough. I will ask him to take your hand.
I will ask if you have a ring. I will ask
you to repeat after me. You said no
prayer because Nathan is not Christian,
but I may offer up a prayer anyway.
Maybe this is that prayer.