1986 American League Champions
Poem No. 121
I typically write very short poems. But last month, in her wonderful newsletter Stunning Sentences,
wrote about the way a long sentence can build energy and tension, and her post reminded me of this piece I wrote a few years ago — a piece I don’t think I fully understand yet:1986 American League Champions
My little desk is now a home for teapots and mugs, with lots of scissors in the drawer, and each October it becomes our ofrenda, but before that it was a clinic for a little dog I miss every day, but before that it held a nascent jungle of pandemic plants, but before that it was a nightstand with tottering stacks of your books, but before that it was where we sat together and laughed a novel into the world, but before that it was a TV stand in my dorm room, where a grainy VHS of The Matrix blew my mind, but before that it was my first grown-up desk, overlooking the fragrant abandoned orchard, so I claimed it by pressing a bumper sticker to the back of the drawer, and I felt it, just now, with my fingertips, as I reached for a pair of scissors.
When I say ‘wrote’ a few years ago, I really mean ‘started,’ because I was actually still editing this poem up until just a few moments ago, and I’m sure I will continue to edit it into the future. Like most of my poems, I don’t think this one is done teaching me yet, it’s only done for now.
And this is a strange poem for me — verbose, a little claustrophobic, its only structure lying in the fact that it is a single, run-on sentence. But I think it works in a way I never intended. It captures a single loop of recursive memory, where touching an object that’s been in the room with me for most of my life can summon a cascade of images connecting the present moment with my own deep past, threaded through every moment between.
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Thanks for reading,
~ A
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This is great. Makes me think of my dad's desk that I used to hide under. I scribbled with crayons on the underside of the drawer. Then it became my desk, and now it's my daughter's desk and when I vacuum in her room I always peek underneath to see the scribbles. And the smell of the drawer and the sound of the handles rattling take me right back to childhood. Thanks for the reminder. It always makes me think of Billy Collins and his amazing way of writing about small things in order to talk about the big things, like in The Lanyard. Which is funny, because my post for this Friday is about Billy Collins. Small world stuff.
This poem is so rich and joyful. Thank you for sharing your story. I feel absolutely blessed.❤️