Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

Late spring, I attended a brilliant performance of Pretend It’s a Boat Poetry Tour, featuring comedian/poet Derrick C. Brown and actress/poet Amber Tamblyn at Coop Gallery. The two friends decided to go on the road together via motorcycle to cities across the country. The event was hosted by The Free Nashville Poetry Library. Yes, my city has a space where you can borrow books of poetry on an honor system. After co-founder Matthew Johnstone welcomed everyone, Amber and Derrick came out with bike helmets. They stood behind a makeshift boat fashioned from a card table turned on its side and invited everyone to imagine they were in it. We were no longer in a gallery but on the seas, being carried along by their stand-up comedic performance and poetry.

Derrick and Amber used a broom as an oar and hilariously exchanged witty repartees. But in between, they read extremely moving poems about breakups, women’s empowerment, the pandemic, and other emotionally charged topics. What we’ve endured over the past years, from health to personal crises, was sifted through their extremely beautiful humor and empathetic imaginations. My sides hurt. I am sure at one point I fell off my chair snorting with laughter.

The evening reminded me of readings of yore, the kind of ease and whimsy that happens between artists and longtime compatriots — no stiff explications of theory smothering a poem, no solemn acts of confession, just a shared vulnerability and intimacy, an overflowing love between friends.

Today’s poem, a double sonnet, queries this notion of friendship, how it concretizes and becomes the substance by which we form ourselves.

Wonder Wheel
by Wo Chan

          for Hye Yun Park

angels undress, & solstice has got us mini, stilled . . .
hot hounds thrash east into ocean’s maribou,
foam that is knowledge, our own gravy bods
veloutine as time is giving. it’s pajeon weather, krill
pink past prime, past memory & vistas futureful.
i saw the backside of my own eyes, great no-god
carousel rouged as nutmeg with blood. the nerve!
i mean it was the nerve. my optics creamy yet thinning,
hair moss in abundance, precise as the meridian.
not even a bird could escape becoming more like a bird.
what is friendship? the same question i asked you returns,
sparkling like a hot fix comet between our minds.
a friend is someone who sits with you, amphibian.
between water & land, a friend sits with you.

& then a curtain opens. a woman reclining shines huge
in absolute tableau. linen, white. skyline, paper. gender,
dame cuchifrita, perfectly still, daring life to blink.
we can’t stop recording this immersive dream. abuse 
shook once our early worlds, & this is how we meet.
it is a miracle to be a tube with legs—it is miraculous (!)
to be a coil in a bag . . . a patty in a briefcase! a living necklace!
a two-legged descendant of clear-boned fish! an optimist!
us red-rich bums more royal than crabs predate bliss!
the washer ring oh-shape of time fits us, tilts us
well over sky’s edge where, somehow, air sits gentlest.
crude, blue mesmero, glistening as fresh silk,
—to wet this globe with salt & glee, to unlatch the attic,
to undo the sleeve. we finger most the principle fabric.

"Wonder Wheel" by Wo Chan. Used by permission of the poet.