Catherine Pierce

Poem of the Week, by Catherine Pierce

Posted on by alisonmcghee

This summer, July 17-19, I’m offering a mini-session of our popular Write Together sessions, in which we gather on Zoom for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening and write quietly together from a guided prompt. $100, with one half-price no-questions-asked scholarship remaining. Please click here for all the details. I’d love to see you in the Zoom room.

A few days ago my friend Julie and I spent half an hour in the anechoic chamber at Orfield Labs, which is the official “quietest place on earth.” It was entirely dark and entirely silent but for the sounds of our breathing and my (always gurgly) stomach.

Minutes went by. My wild, tumbling mind began to still. A feeling of peace replaced thought. Usually I think of my arms and legs and head and chest as separate, but there in the chamber my body felt whole, and I was so grateful to it. When the guide opened the door and turned the lights on and asked how we felt, all I could think was I want to live here.

Abecedarian for the Power Outage, by Catherine Pierce
Absolute, the sudden silence—the fan stops
buzzing, the refrigerator hushes. No,
child, the night-light can’t turn on. The nervous
dog curls herself like a comma against any soft thing.
Everything non-house—crickets, wind rustle,
full white moon—is amplified. Everything else: vanished.
Goodbye, breaking and broken news; farewell, accomplishing. Dear
husband, shall we fool around? Dear moon, you reckless marvel.
In this floating black sphere, there are no edges,
just transformations. The microwave looks
kindly in the candle’s amber
light. The curtains are full of possibilities.
Miraculous, this gift: how
nothing can reach you here. Not what you haven’t done, not tomorrow’s
OB-GYN appointment, not all the wildfires and floods and hurricanes
piling up like megaphoned
questions you can’t answer. The night
roils around you, only it’s not the night, it’s
something bigger, something that holds you, something
that tells you, gently but firmly, this can’t last,
under no circumstances will this last.
Vellum moon, solicitous microwave—nothing
will stay. You’ve drawn
Xs through your obligations,
you’re pleading for more time, but the power blares back,
zealous in its quest to return what you dropped. Here: Every stone. Every needle.

Click here for more information about poet Catherine Pierce. This poem first appeared in the The Southern Review. 

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My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Catherine Pierce

Posted on by alisonmcghee

IMG_0531We were classmates. He was a country kid, like me, and like me, he was condemned to ride the bus for miles and miles. I dreaded that bus every day of my life –it was a place of fear and intimidation and endless cruelty.

On this particular day, he sat down next to me and everyone began teasing us. They were loud and relentless. I was desperate to make them stop, make it stop, make it all stop just stop just stop, and at some point I picked up my empty lunch box and bashed it over his head. 

Did the teasing end? I don’t remember. What I do remember is how he held his hands up to protect himself. The poem below brought me back to those years of fear and that day on the bus. Kindness is in part an act of self-preservation. Had I just sat still and endured the ride I could have spared myself the lifelong memory of having hurt a kid like me, another kid who was only trying to get home. 

 

 

Poem for the Woods, by Catherine Pierce 
        

Not as I would dream them now, not with growls
and twig snaps, not with dark birds and thorned vines

I’ve invented (keening blackwing, violencia). Not late-dayblood-
sun-dappled, not refuge of men equipped

with knives and lust, not a mouth into which you might
venture and not return, no, nothing like that.

This is a poem for the woods as I knew them,
shaded and cool behind the Novaks’ house.

They seemed endless, but there was a shortcut
to Fairblue Swim Club. They held no growls,

no spikes. Only squirrels skittering, plunking acorns
down the canopy. We’d been warned of poison ivy,

but never found it. We’d been warned of rotten limbs,
but none fell. One muddy, sun-laced afternoon, we took salt

from the pantry and ventured out to where the rocks
teemed with slugs. I’d like to say our cruelty

had to do with power—human girls versus torpidity—
but really it was our curiosity, pure and unnuanced.

We wanted to see mineral against membrane.
We wanted to see something living melt. If I could,

I’d find my younger self in those woods and stop her.
I’d say, Someday you’ll carry your cruelties with you

and you’ll never be able to set them down. Keep walking now.
Keep pretending you know of nothing but kindness.

 

 

 

 

For more information on Catherine Pierce, please check out her website.