This week's Poet of the People is Ellen Malphrus. Ellen is a vibrant force in South Carolina's literary community as she links the present with the past. A former student of James Dickey, and is a fierce warrior and advocate of the literary craft.
I am still waiting for the honor of hosting and sharing the mic with her at an event.
-Al Black
Ellen Malphrus is author of the novel Untying the Moon (foreword by Pat Conroy). Her collection Mapmaking with Sisyphus was a finalist for the 2023 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize. Publications include Atlanta Review, Chariton, Weber: Contemporary West, Poetry South, James Dickey Review, Blue Mountain Review, Natural Bridge, Southern Literary Journal, William & Mary Review, Fall Lines, Yemassee, Haight Ashbury Review, Catalyst, Without Halos, and Our Prince of Scribes. She is a professor and Writer-in-Residence at USC Beaufort who divides her time (unevenly) between the marshes of her native South Carolina Lowcountry and the mountains of western Montana.
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Mother Emanuel
for Reverend Clementa Pinckney, Reverend Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Mrs. Cynthia Graham-Hurd, Mrs. Susie J. Jackson, Mrs. Ethel Lee Lance, Reverend DePayne Middleton-Doctor, Tiwanza, Kibwe Diop Sanders, Reverend Daniel Lee Simmons, Sr., and Mrs. Myra Singleton Quarles Thompson
In her custodian’s closet the big
squeeze handle bucket
sits on its rollers, weary and dented,
stained past judgment day
when the wash water went
pink to red to crimson
with each faithful swath
across the solemn floor
and anguish
flowed through city pipelines
down the river
out to sea,
mingling with millennia of
mopped up blood—
ensanguined taint of senseless history.
We bow our heads, as nine cannot,
in awe of a
congregation who chose compassion.
Chose peace—
lest Charleston roil up in
hot black waves of wrath.
As surely it could have.
As some say it should have.
Dozens of unassailed steeples
rise above the peninsula canopy—
yet the grace of but one
makes this the
Holy City.
~
Founding Father
As you gallop
through the park
in granite stillness
children stretch from playground swings
toward the cloud-capped roof of innocence—
expecting to break the sky
if they spring out far enough.
And even if they land in earthbound sneakers
they have traveled farther
than your stone horse will take you
ever again.
A child’s rein might lead away from
this block of town square immortality
but they are busy
and don’t come close enough
to notice
your green streaked face
or hear the echo
in your bloodless veins,
Hero.
They don’t know that
you die again
as they squeal in sunlight
and still more
in the sharp of night—
when floodlights point
clear and cold.
~
Intermission
So you pitch a blue tent
in the field out back and
carry in enough booze
to pour yourself out,
prove you are alive
or not.
And you must be alive because
you are unfit to sleep in the house—
because you would lie in the dirt but
you’re not drunk enough to stand
the mosquitoes.
Who cares about the snakes.
You must be alive because
the knife bolts you
when you find it
in the sleeping bag—
because it’s the trap
you want to kill and
when you slash the top of the tent
the stars step back.
And you laugh.
That happens to you.
You, who must be alive because
you’re not watching yourself
wander
numb
by the river—
because that’s you, laughing.
Crying.
Crying when you remember
it is your mother who’s dying—
not you.
Live guilt blossoms
because you would even consider
stealing the stars
from yourself
when soon there will be so much darkness.
And they are fragile, the stars,
despite how they sometimes slice you.
Yes, you must be alive because
look at you scraping
labels from the empty bottles
and slinging them
to the recycle pile—
because you pick up the knife
and wonder where you put
the duct tape.
Nobody dead would do that.
~
Conjure Woman
Maiden, I have called you. Enter.
Closer now, and fade the lamplight.
I have watched you
in the nighthawk alley
aching alone in the stillness. But
in that courtyard news will never come.
Bound and bent they keep
him, far from the reaches
of your ever listening.
Yet his cries mingle in the pale wind,
and I hear them every nightfall.
I will tell you where to find him,
if you choose the dread and desert.
Only then can you begin to know that
nothing stands but dark. And
light bends to make the night more seemly.
They will tell you
white and white and white
and never stop. They will tell you
that but cannot keep you.
Ride in distance
through the furied sunset
past dahlias trailing
wildly across black dirt.
When silver separates the thunder
branch off at the thistle tree
and listen.
And if you can bear it, from
there you can hear the world.
Then you will find him.
Then you can know
why they tremble in the splintered twilight
and would sooner tear their hearts than say
that
I am of the other wonder.
~
Communion
The happy situation of a
notebook filled with lines—
no matter how poorly or
well placed on the page,
one following the next,
written here by me
or there by you
as we carefully
crashingly
longingly
lovingly
try to tell it
like it is,
was, will be.
Try.
We hold the pen and
roll our fingertips while
trains insist on distant tracks
and years bend over edgewise.
From time to time we walk away
to refill the larders
of life
but we always come back to them.
Words.
I didn’t think of you there
with your pain and tenderness
while I slow danced and
shimmied with my own.
But you are so clear to me now,
leaning over your cluttered desk
or propped in a bed of pillows.
I have wishes for you—
to finish drafts
and publish work
and catch every train
your heart sends you.
And when I take up my pen
for the first mark of the day
I will raise a glass in your honor
whether I remember to lift it or not.
