Marcus McCann nominated for the Gerald Lampert Award for his book Soft Where. Here’s part of a poem from p. 30 called Fake Spring
The mud-sucked foot, a popped cork,
the hill we slicked, build a stick fence on —
sweet spot, spit abnegated, againable,
socks of mound flour, 200 lbs,
a ton, wet a mole’s nose. Stop.
Thaw. What we thought reprieve
looked like: vacation, night walking
its dog. Or sleep-disrupted,
drains plugged, waterlogged, how
we crept up the stairs — groping,
groggy at the slimmest slice of
sweet spot, spit abnegated, againable,
Some lovely oblique and direct tumble of words at play in here:
It’s got some wonderful rhythms, speaking of which in other reading…
“the rhythm and music of a poem reawaken sedentary readers to the half-forgotten metres of their own pulses, while certain lines of poetry elicit a primitive, physical response – cause shivering, tears, cause hairs to hackle on the forearm. Re-embody us. Reconnect us to real life.” ~ Steven Heighton, p. 59 The Admen Move on Lhasa: Writing and Culture in a Virtual World [via Heather]