Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

I am fond of visiting lamp stores, my favorite being The Lamp Shop in Burlington, Vermont. It’s an old-world experience. Chandeliers, pendant lights, flush-mount fixtures hang from all parts of the ceiling. Colorful sconces decorate the walls. Candelabra floor lamps crowd out any would-be buyer. Everywhere you look, your eyes fall upon cones, pillars, and diamonds of light. Shades the color of flowers turn the store into a luminous garden.

One year, I visited The Lamp Shop numerous times, and with greater frequency during winter. It was the year I went through personal challenges by the pound. My inner world was as tenebrous as Vermont’s darkest days. I could not see my way to solutions. The store represented some ideal of beauty, my attempt at contentment. Its abundance of light was an effort at feeling good inside and outside.

Some people visit the Caribbean and other warmer climes. I drove to a lamp store. Some people dine by a fireside hearth at their favorite restaurant. I drove to a lamp store. Some people . . . you get my point.

Reading the headlines, I thought recently, of those seeking refuge, of those on the social, economic, and political margins. I thought about how maybe America is a lamp shop, a place where people believe in light and transformation, who believe becoming a part of its suburbs, revered institutions, and social rituals will allow them to be better human beings.

But, as today’s poem suggests, maybe sometimes we bring more to the table than we know. And maybe the world around us could change its attitudes about us.

Divinity School
by Ariana Reines

I like the word Masoretic but feel

Disinclined to use it in a sentence

Scrying instead my platelets

& bad dreams. Something

Keeps sleeping against

Me that is not the person

Beside me. By “against”

I mean against. My lack 

Of beauty was supposed 

To be some fault of my own.

—bartering my hook

Nose against your virtuosity, walking the line

Between pity & horror having come

Here for one reason & one reason 

Only: to have become at last American.

I wouldn’t have chosen it knowingly.

“They Dream Only of America” is a poem

By John Ashbery. I gratefully received a bequest

Of his collection of pornography & a very

Ugly chair. But you can tell no one these facts

There are things I was told I’d have to take

To my grave. For I toil in a public place

Using an invisible medium, employed by all

But subtracted, in my hands & in my mouth

From common use. Scorned by all

I yet remain here. Why you ask?

Curiosity

“Divinity School” by Ariana Reines from THE ROSE © 2024 Ariana Reines. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Graywolf Press.