Poem of the Week: Gretchen Primack

Photo by Deborah Degraffenreid

The Dogs and I Walked Our Woods,

and there was a dog, precisely the colors of autumn,

asleep between two trunks by the trail.

But it was a coyote, paws pink

with a clean-through hole in the left,

and a deep hole in the back of the neck,

dragged and placed in the low crotch

of a tree. But it was two coyotes,

the other's hole in the side of the neck,

the other with a dried pool of blood below

the nose, a dried pool below the anus,

the other dragged and placed

in the adjoining low crook, the other's body

a precise mirror of the first. The eyes were closed,

the fur smooth and precisely the colors

of autumn, a little warm to my touch though the bodies

were not. The fur was cells telling themselves

to spin to keep her warm to stand

and hunt and keep. It was a red

autumn leaf on the forest floor, but

it was a blooded brown leaf, and another, because

they dragged the bodies to create a monument

to domination, to the enormous human,

and if I bore a child who suffered to see this,

or if I bore a child who gladdened to see this, or if

I bore a child who kept walking, I could not bear

it, so I will not bear one.

  

-Gretchen Primack   

  

From Kind (Post Traumatic Press, 2012)    

Used by permission.

  

  

Gretchen Primack is the author of two poetry collections, Kind and Doris' Red Spaces, and a chapbook, The Slow Creaking of Planets. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, The Massachusetts Review, FIELD, Antioch Review, Ploughshares, and other journals. Also an animal advocate, she co-wrote the memoir The Lucky Ones: My Passionate Fight for Farm Animals (Penguin Avery 2012).

 

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem of the Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

  

If you are interested in reading past poems of the week, feel free to visit the blog archive. 

 

May Sunday Kind of Love: Kamilah Aisha Moon & Gretchen Primack

Sunday Kind of Love

presents:

Kamilah Aisha Moon
&
   Gretchen Primack  

  

  

Sunday May 18, 2014

5-7pm

Busboys & Poets

2021 14th St. NW

Washington, DC 20009

Hosted by

Sarah Browning & Katy Richey
$5 online or at the door

As always, open mic follows!

Co-Sponsored by
Busboys and Poets &

Split This Rock

Kamilah Aisha Moon's work has been featured in several journals and anthologies, including Harvard Review, jubilat, The Awl, Poem-A-Day for the Academy of American Poets, Superstition Review and Gathering Ground. Her poems and prose have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, the Lambda Literary Prize and the Audre Lorde Publishing Triangle Award. A native of Nashville, TN, currently living in Brooklyn, NY, Moon is the author of She Has a Name (Four Way Books) and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. She is currently a finalist for both the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry and the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry from the Publishing Triangle.

Gretchen Primack is the author of two poetry collections, Kind and Doris' Red Spaces, and a chapbook, The Slow Creaking of Planets. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, The Massachusetts Review, FIELD, Antioch Review, Ploughshares, and other journals. Also an animal advocate, she co-wrote the memoir The Lucky Ones: My Passionate Fight for Farm Animals (Penguin Avery 2012). 


Kamilah Aisha Moon photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Gretchen Primack photo by Deborah Degraffenreid

Poem of the Week: Gretchen Primack

                               

The Absence of Unnecessary Hurting  

    

This is the press of the earth. One star hanging

there, honking like a goose. The lake

a smudge of black juice, the hill a draped

pancake. Frogs singing, sharp

and gutty.

Night! Clean air, clear water, five

baby mink in a pile, snoring.

Overwhelm can be dug from sludge

below dock, on either side fruits slung

over branches, glued to their seeds.

Here in the slurry live the things

I consider, here in the hills. What do people

think of? What do they think of me

in my carings?

Ripples lunch on each other, heavenly

Body lights flicker, too cool for moths.

I don't want to hurt things.

The fine brown eye of an animal,

the broad slick leaf of a wing.

I'd like to be gentle here.

I want to be worthy of you, lovely

ground, bury my face in your tired

broken bread.

-Gretchen Primack 

Used by permission.  

From Kind (Post Traumatic Press 2013)

Gretchen Primack's poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, The Massachusetts Review, FIELD, Antioch Review, Ploughshares, and other journals. She's the author of two poetry collections, Kind (Post-Traumatic Press 2013) and the forthcoming Doris' Red Spaces (Mayapple 2014), and a chapbook, The Slow Creaking of Planets (Finishing Line 2007).

Primack has worked as a union organizer, working women's advocate, and prison educator. Also an advocate for non-human animals, she co-wrote The Lucky Ones: My Passionate Fight for Farm Animals (Penguin Avery 2012) with Jenny Brown.  She lives in Hurley, NY. 

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem of the Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

If you are interested in reading past poems of the week, feel free to visit the blog archive.