Poem of the Week: Lee Sharkey

 

Man on a Sofa

 --for Henry Braun

A man is lying on a sofa.

The man has been reading.

He has laid down the book beside him.

The man's form is waiting to be occupied.

Give him a name, Henry, say; look how the form fills in,

as if you could read, in Henry's limbs,

in Henry's countenance,

Henry's dreams dancing in his head.

The book by his side is Henry's companion.

The book beside Henry is writing itself as we speak.

Meanwhile, a night-dark form in the shape of a man has occupied the sofa.

Somehow it has taken the place of the man,

the man we call Henry.

Pick up the book the absence of Henry was reading.

The book is night-dark and brilliant.

The book is writing itself as we read.

Maybe, the book says, Henry has gone for a walk in the woods

and found a small patch of small green lilies.

Maybe, the book says, Henry has set off the New World with his backpack.

The absence of Henry stirs in its sleep.

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Used with permission.

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Lee Sharkey is the author most recently of Calendars of Fire (Tupelo Press 2013) and A Darker Sweeter String (Off the Grid Press 2008), of which Maine's Poet Laureate Betsy Sholl says, "If our dreams could edit the news (and sometimes our nightmares) these poems are how they'd wake us up to the urgency of our times." Her poem sequence To A Vanished World (Puckerbrush Press 1997) was written in response to Roman Vishniac's photographs of Eastern European Jewry in the years just preceding the Nazi Holocaust. Her awards include the Maine Arts Commission's Individual Artist Fellowship in Literary Arts and the Abraham Sutzkever Centennial Translation Prize. Lee lives in rural Maine, teaches a writing workshop for adults with mental illness, and stands in a weekly peace vigil with Women in Black. She co-edits the Beloit Poetry Journal, which published chapbooks of the work of Split This Rock poets for the first and third Split This Rock festivals. leesharkey.net

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Poem of the Week: Lee Sharkey

Eye

A rubber-coated metal bullet struck Ziad's eye during clashes in Bethlehem. . . . His eyeball fell in the palm of his hand and . . . he kept holding it till he reached the hospital. He thought they could put it back in.

-Muna Hamzeh, Refugees in Our Own Land



What do you do with an eye in the cup of your hand?

What do you see that you didn't?

What do you make of a sphere of jelly with fins of torn muscle?

What do your fingers impress on the rind?

Do you rush it to hospital, where a surgeon waits to fuse sight to vision?

Does the eye have a nationality? a history?

Does the eye have a user name?

Its own rubber bullet?

Where is the eye transcribed?

A little globe there and you are the keeper

Of the watery anteroom, the drink of clear glass

Dear eye

Once it lay snug in fat in its orbit

Once it saw as a child

Through humor a peppering of stars


-Lee Sharkey


From A Darker, Sweeter String, Off the Grid Press, 2008. Used by permission.


Lee Sharkey is the author most recently of A Darker Sweeter String (Off the Grid Press), of which Maine's Poet Laureate Betsy Sholl says, "If our dreams could edit the news (and sometimes our nightmares) these poems are how they'd wake us up to the urgency of our times." She is also the author of the book-length poem farmwife and To A Vanished World (both Puckerbrush Press), a poem sequence in response to Roman Vishniac's photographs of Eastern European Jewry in the years just preceding the Nazi Holocaust. She lives in rural Maine, teaches a writing workshop for adults with mental illness, and stands in a weekly peace vigil with Women in Black. She is the co-editor of the Beloit Poetry Journal, which published a chapbook of the work of Split This Rock poets for the first Split This Rock festival.

Sharkey appeared on the panel What Makes Effective Political Poetry? Editors' Perspectives during Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness 2010.

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!

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