A song about a coyote, the moon, and a tree, or maybe my sister
An afternoon moon hangs over the wolf pine.
Three quarters, waxing, it shines in the blue sky
as a coyote cries in the near woods. My sister,
She hides from the encroachment of houses,
road, a lone human running beneath
the daytime moon. I am running, not away
But to hear the blood pump in my ears,
each footfall reminding me I am body,
solid and frail, tangled like that pine,
Shallow-rooted, ragged, reaching
to hold that bright moon in my living arms,
howling for a sister lost in the woods.
Pantoum: Fury
Only a boy, fourteen, burning with rage.
His grief a stone in his heart. His fury.
The gun is all his power, the expression
of years spent in a dark and angry room.
His grief a stone in his heart, his fury
explodes the soft bodies of children.
Years in a dark and angry room
have left him no way out that he can see
But to explode soft bodies, children –
as he is but will be no more.
He can see no way out but through
oceans of blood and terror.
He thinks he is real, now, but soon he’ll be no more
even though he is live-streaming,
oceans of blood spattering the lens, the terror
of classmates and teachers shared with the world.
He wants them to see. So he is live-streaming
his one last act for us all. We will be sorry.
Classmates and teachers share a world of regret
in their last fearful minutes. What have we lost?
A gun is not power. It has no expression.
This one last act of rage and sorrow:
Oh my dears, my children, what have we lost?
A boy, only fourteen, burning with rage.
Laura Buxbaum
Laura Buxbaum is a re-emerging poet at 66, living in Maine. In addition to her day job at a nonprofit, Laura writes poetry and juggles a few too many other pursuits. She raises goats, makes cheese, cultivates a much-too-large garden, runs, hikes, skis, sings, and plays the cello. Her poems can be seen in Thimble Literary Magazine and Rat's Ass Review, and forthcoming in the Midcoast Poetry Journal (Maine).
Why this Knocked Taylor Out:
There's so much to each of these poems we could go over. The musicality of "A song.." really stood out to me when I read it out loud and I was compelled by how the poem weaves myth with lived experience. Just go through the poems slowly, and notice all the slant and internally rhyming that is happening. It gives the poem a lilting lullaby feel that is usurped by the idea of the sister being missing when so much texture is present.
And I couldn't stop thinking about the pantoum. Never let it be said that I can't appreciate a good formal poem. And I think it's fascinating how this poem is navigating immense violence within a restricted form. There is so much texture there to think about. I feel like the formal restraints allow the poem to hold grief in the same way that grief holds onto the body. Repetition builds itself into rumination. It forces us to look at the type of world we are building, and consider what we could/should do differently.
While these poems have different central focuses, I think one of the ways they are communicating is how the speaker is watching over the other people in the poem. There is a care this speaker has for the individuals they are seeking/observing that I really appreciated.
Interview:
Why did you choose Team Taylor for this poem?
Well – I had submitted another set of poems earlier, and chose Taylor largely because one of the poems had reference to dinosaurs. You didn’t accept them, but you sent me such a warm and encouraging personalized rejection that I felt really good about it. And like I’d made a connection – so now I’m all Team Taylor, all the way, even though there are no dinosaurs in these poems.
Talk to me about navigating violence in "Pantoum: Fury." How did you approach this subject and why did this form speak to you?
Oh – this was really hard, but since one particular school shooting last fall, in Georgia, I was obsessed with the knowledge that the shooter was a 14-year-old boy. I have a son (in his twenties) and I just can’t fathom how these children can get to a place where this seems to be an answer. I felt such grief for that boy, almost as much as for his victims. I kept thinking about what kind of anger and powerlessness can bring a child to such an act. I’m struggling now to explain it – so I guess that’s why I had to put it in a poem. I don’t know why, but it seemed to call for a formal structure. At first I tried to use the ghazal form, but that degree of repetition was just too much. Usually my poems arrive quickly, but this one took me months.
Musicality and sound work is a big part of these poems, how do you incorporate that into your work?
I’m not sure how conscious I am of that when I’m writing. I love musicality and rhythm in other poets – love a line that scans but is just a little irregular. I love internal rhyme and near-rhyme. One of my favorite poems is Love Calls Us to the Things of This World by Richard Wilbur: “Outside the open window /The morning air is all awash with angels.” How good is that? Also, I’m a singer and a cellist. But strangely, I’ve never actually written a song, and I don’t know if I could.