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Meghan O’Rourke’s new poetry compendium “Halflife”
is available through online and freestanding bookstores nationwide. O’Rourke is
generally recognized as a poet with the unique ability to express the
centrality of a concept or image poetically. Her work has been described as “A spikey, cross currented style of
poetry.” The poet is the culture editor for the online publication Slate as well as being the poetry editor
for the Paris Review.
Our
first exposure to her work was “Descent” and “Epitaph for Mother and Child” on
Poetry Daily. (See original in archives here: http://www.poems.com)
I then
purchased a copy of her recent volume Halflife. With its insomniacal
urban narrators, and their earthy reality and gritty poignancy, the works in Halflife constitute
writing that is both compelling and fiercely intelligent. O’Rourke, a graduate of Warren Wilson’s MFA
program. The Chickasaw
Plum appreciates Ms. O’Rourke’s permission to run the following selections from
“Halflife.” jrg
By my hands I hang in the bedroom
of a man's strange mind.
The walls are lined with fleurs-de-lis
made from the fur of mice.
Smoke climbs in the chimney.
Yet another plague—
in northern pastures long-nosed horses
stamp at the smell of bodies
burning behind the castle.
The rope around my fingers creaks,
moths bang against the window,
a doctor stumbles up the walk—
the corners are full of needles
to help me sleep,
mice lie like kings in their copper traps.
Keep still, he says,
the vein is hard to find
without a little pinch. See?
Supervision is so
much better than freedom.
Sleep
by Meghan O'Rourke
Pawnbroker, scavenger, cheapskate,
come creeping from your pigeon-filled backrooms,
past guns and clocks and locks and cages,
past pockets emptied and coins picked from the floor;
come sweeping with the rainclouds down the river
through the brokenblack windows of factories
to avenues where movies whisk through basement projectors
and children peel up into the supplejack twilight—
there a black-eyed straight-backed drag queen
preens, fusses, fixes her hair in a shop window on Prince,
a young businessman jingles his change
and does his Travis Bickle for a long-faced friend,
there on the corner I laughed at a joke Jim made.
In the bedroom the moon is a dented spoon,
cold, getting colder, so hurry sleep,
come creep into bed, let’s get it over with;
lay me down and close my eyes
and tell me whip, tell me winnow
tell me sweet tell me skittish
tell me No tell me no such thing
tell me straw into gold tell me crept into fire
tell me lost all my money tell me hoarded, verboten,
but promise tomorrow I will be profligate,
stepping into the sun like a trophy.