This poem haunts me. Not because it’s sad –or maybe it is; I don’t really know what this poem is about– but because when I read it, it brings back times of internal struggle. Like when I was young and trying desperately to work my solo way out of a secret, six-year eating disorder. Partway through this struggle, for reasons I no longer remember, I sat down and made a list of all the people dearest to me. One way to translate “eating disorder,” maybe, is “self-hatred,” but I clearly remember that when I finished the list, all their faces came swimming up in my mind, and every face was smiling at me with love. It came to me in that moment that clothes, size, money, age, looks, where a person went to college– none of it mattered. The one thing that would matter about me to the world, if only I could remember it, was my own spirit. That moment was a turning point in my struggle. And somehow it relates to this beautiful, mysterious poem, because when I read How we looked / didn’t matter for once / because we were flying, I feel as if I’m flying.
How We Looked, by Kathy Fagan
didn’t matter for once
because we were flying.
The crows we were
clothed in took a running
start for the gothic
and that was all:
tooled doors opened
and waxy air
lifted us on its current.
And though the jeweled
light was dim we could tell
the faces we were
seeing were beautiful,
each with a mouth
and voice, and there was
no doubt then,
as our chins and our rib cages,
our wrists and our knees
rose, that what mattered
was that we obey
for once, and when
the voices said,
Look up, Look up,
though rain fell
in our eyes, we did.
Click here for more information about Kathy Fagan.
Alison McGhee 