Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

My friend Jeffrey and I sipped away at flutes of champagne. Both of us looked spiffy in black suits. We were at a book awards ceremony. It was my first New York gala, and so I felt like Cinderella at the ball.

Feeling a little out of place, we took self-deprecating shots at ourselves and laughed. Then, a very tall man, a fan of Jeffrey’s fiction, approached with the question. He wanted to know when Jeffrey visited his small town in Pennsylvania. Jeffrey said, he had never. But, the man said, you must have! In your novel, you place the laundromat next to the pharmacy across from the square where a member of my church sells her apple pies that draw dozens at the farmer’s market. Jeffrey repeated that his story was made-up, a work of fiction. The man became belligerent. O, you writers! then stormed away.

The encounter reminded me of the premise of a once popular book in creative writing classes. Its author asks the question: who is better equipped to describe a town? A long-time resident or a passenger on a train who, passing through, only gets a brief glimpse of the town’s residents, baseball field, schools, and homes? While the year-round local can name the streets, her neighbors’ names, and probably its history, the author concludes the traveler has the edge. Acts of memory, he argues, do not compare to acts of the imagination.

Today’s deeply satisfying poem arrives from an exacting eye. The poet’s kinetic imagination and mental roaming feel gorgeously reportorial and cinematic, mapping self-reflection through their portrayal of vibrant landscapes.

Big Purple Peonies
by Margaret Ross

Big purple peonies between yellow leaves
and behind them, leopards passing…
Green mountains then smaller
blue mountains and the stars’ 
white rhinestones glued onto the rayon.
She wears it buttoned to the throat.
Blouse holding its bright landscape
up to skin. A button in the folds
of a peony. Even the slightest movement
of the arm reveals a shimmer 
in the fabric, and sunlit stars
toss looser versions of themselves 
in spots of smeared light
on the ceiling. You could never 
wash that, it would just dissolve.
The cheapest satin always feeling
damp when dry. Along this route
the train follows the river as the river 
widens, narrows. Concrete
platforms of the various towns
slow down and linger for a minute
each with its specific
litter and surrounding shops
and asphalt, cars the people
waiting lean on. Sparse or dense
configurations of the trees
amassing toward the vacant
circle on my ticket 
where my mother lives.
Only half the seats face forward
but most passengers prefer them 
to the roomy backward rows. There
the physical sensation of the journey
is a feeling of prolonged withdrawal.
It can make you nauseous, facing
what you come from. Gravel
ballasting the track and its intricate
edge where the stones foam out
across the dirt and the living
forms thrive, kind with the spiky
pink buds, kind with a 
skinny finger-shaped green
head swaying on a tall stem.
Do you think knowledge changes
anything? Everything
looks the same at the last stop
except the office building
going up has walls now. 

“Big Purple Peonies” by Margaret Ross from SATURDAY © 2024 Margaret Ross. Used by permission of the poet.