Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

On a recent Zoom meeting for a literary magazine, I asked a guest contributor: If you could narrow your essay to a single thesis, what would it be? As soon as I blurted it out, I regretted it. I have been asked similar questions about my poetry. It feels like these readers are…allergic to ambiguity, like they resist a poem containing multiple, sometimes contradictory truths. My colleagues on the call rolled their eyes and began a round of not-so-hidden backchanneling on their keyboards. I was ashamed. I could only imagine what ridicule my inane, although well-intentioned, question generated.

I have made similar blunders in my life and subsequently launched into a week-long surmise of inner doubts, likelihoods, and depressions — like that time I mistook someone at a fundraiser in a festively lit ballroom for a long-ago acquaintance. Or, a time that I clearly othered someone by asking “Where are you from?” I self-corrected to “Where did you grow up,” but it was too late. The compounded question made it worse, proving to me that sometimes it's best to listen, before imposing my curiosity.

In such instances, I find that I try to cover my tracks for fear of being viewed as anything but charming, thoughtful, kind, and caring. I drown in embarrassment. Yet, these feelings are small relative to the shame I felt after my divorce. I didn’t know how to handle the disappointment of family and friends, whose thoughts about me I can not control.

Lately, I’ve been asking “Why do I care how I am viewed?” I can’t say I know the answer. But I can hope that how I am viewed allows for change, both personally, and in the collective.

It is a lot of work managing your image. We are required to do so at work, in public, less so in our homes. But hopefully we are accepted for the humanly flawed individuals that we are, but even more, hopefully we accept ourselves and all of our complexities. I love the clarity in today’s poem, in how it nurtures self-awareness in the wake of emotional turmoil and growth.

By Then
by David Rivard

By then I was leaving,
and the deer in the meadow had stopped 
paying me their mind. I was alone
as I’d always been
but twice as deep for knowing it
now. Sometimes it’s OK
you have to wander a strange house
covered only by a blanket,
itchy wool rubbing against your naked ass
and shoulders—
the coarse gray fire station blanket
given me as a child. I didn’t know
whether this was one of those
times; I mean, 
I didn’t know if I was “OK.”
Shame thinks of us
in friendly terms—it sees how we are,
on the blink—it wants only
to do us the kindness
of anchoring us to the world it makes us
feel unworthy of.
I kept thinking a good cry
will take care of everything
wrong—getting 
day by day
skinnier but filled
somehow despite it all
to bursting.
Do me a favor,
I wanted to ask shame,
hold me, why don’t you?
Because at heart
it’s just that simple 
maybe. I wanted to be
held, that’s all. When I say
the word “world”
I mean love of course.
When I say “then”
I mean now. Always.

“By Then” by David Rivard from SOME OF YOU WILL KNOW © 2022 David Rivard published by Arrowsmith Press. Used by permission of the poet.