Rodd Whelpley
Mesa at New Year
Heat travels, but my feet don’t know it.
The cold of the of the Arizona patio burns
into blisters newly opened by the wrong shoes
on a rocky desert trail. It took until December
to fly from home to Mesa:
A week to watch
the days grow longer, stare across the condo courtyard
through neighbors’ windows, their high def screens
tuned to CNN.
Another child – a boy – has died
in custody.
He knew no higher government
than following his mother, at night pausing
on a puddle-shaped rock by a cactus, its warm
oozing through his toes into the dark, black
as his hair and every bit as undeterred
by starlight or things his father claimed
white folks would say.
He knew for all of them
the words for please and thank you, the word
for water, but instead drank dry the blood
of his cracked lips, hot as Christmas bourbon
in my glass.
Surely, there was an uncle somewhere
in a suburb of Chicago, a baggage handler or butcher
at a factory in Iowa.
Must have been work ready
for his mother at a restaurant in Ottumwa or
with a tax-preparer cousin in Ohio, anticipating
more place settings for the seasons, louder songs
at birthdays, barbeque, screaming meemies and M-80s
on Independence Day, high school football, his family
seated next to mine, feeling a post-harvest chill
against which we’ve all prepared, by half time
fully covered, my wife beside his mother, striking up
a friendship, admiring the fabric of their blanket,
its pattern, its color.
How toasty it must be.
A few words from Rodd on "Mesa at New Year":
I can only assume that pairing this poem with a photo from an exhibition called "Body Bag" will explode the final image of the family's blanket in a deeply awful and perfect way. Frankly, my biggest fear for the poem is that it ends with such a Pollyanna-like image. Of course, had that family been cared for and allowed asylum in the U.S., the cultural exchange would likely never have been as simple and sweet as the poem imagines, and I worry that the last scene's idealization of what might have been softens the actual, real horror of what is - of how we (as represented by our government) would rather allow asylum seekers to die than be given a chance to live up to our ideals and their hopes. Our government is not giving us (current citizens) the chance to live up to our ideals as the people of the country that welcome families from other nations, allows those new families the space to live the ordinary, beautiful lives so many of us get to live largely by accident of where and when we happened to be born. That is certainly a juxtaposition I hope the poem suggests.
The cold of the of the Arizona patio burns
into blisters newly opened by the wrong shoes
on a rocky desert trail. It took until December
to fly from home to Mesa:
A week to watch
the days grow longer, stare across the condo courtyard
through neighbors’ windows, their high def screens
tuned to CNN.
Another child – a boy – has died
in custody.
He knew no higher government
than following his mother, at night pausing
on a puddle-shaped rock by a cactus, its warm
oozing through his toes into the dark, black
as his hair and every bit as undeterred
by starlight or things his father claimed
white folks would say.
He knew for all of them
the words for please and thank you, the word
for water, but instead drank dry the blood
of his cracked lips, hot as Christmas bourbon
in my glass.
Surely, there was an uncle somewhere
in a suburb of Chicago, a baggage handler or butcher
at a factory in Iowa.
Must have been work ready
for his mother at a restaurant in Ottumwa or
with a tax-preparer cousin in Ohio, anticipating
more place settings for the seasons, louder songs
at birthdays, barbeque, screaming meemies and M-80s
on Independence Day, high school football, his family
seated next to mine, feeling a post-harvest chill
against which we’ve all prepared, by half time
fully covered, my wife beside his mother, striking up
a friendship, admiring the fabric of their blanket,
its pattern, its color.
How toasty it must be.
A few words from Rodd on "Mesa at New Year":
I can only assume that pairing this poem with a photo from an exhibition called "Body Bag" will explode the final image of the family's blanket in a deeply awful and perfect way. Frankly, my biggest fear for the poem is that it ends with such a Pollyanna-like image. Of course, had that family been cared for and allowed asylum in the U.S., the cultural exchange would likely never have been as simple and sweet as the poem imagines, and I worry that the last scene's idealization of what might have been softens the actual, real horror of what is - of how we (as represented by our government) would rather allow asylum seekers to die than be given a chance to live up to our ideals and their hopes. Our government is not giving us (current citizens) the chance to live up to our ideals as the people of the country that welcome families from other nations, allows those new families the space to live the ordinary, beautiful lives so many of us get to live largely by accident of where and when we happened to be born. That is certainly a juxtaposition I hope the poem suggests.
Biography
Rodd Whelpley manages an electric efficiency program for 32 cities across Illinois and lives near Springfield. His poems have appeared in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, 2River View, Star 82 Review, Barren, The Chagrin River Review and other journals. Catch as Kitsch Can, his first chapbook, was published in 2018. Find him at www.RoddWhelpley.com. On Twitter as @RoddWhelpley.
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