Each day from January 7 to January 20, Rumpus Original Poems will feature poetry written in response to the coming presidential inauguration. Today’s poems are from Eve L. Ewing.
Do I come across as a middle child with first-child energy? Would you recommend treatment for my character, and if so, from a sliding-scale social worker or a psychiatrist? Meditation or medication? Out-patient or in?
Dad quit smoking via a hypnotist shortly before my sister Margaret was born. When I was eight or nine, he liked telling me the story of the hypnosis, sitting together on the green sofa in the living room, parallelograms of sunlight on the brown carpet.
My love, I signed / what papers they put before me. / The next morning a breeze / swept in across the bar. I watched it lean / the white sails toward starboard / and lift your heavy ashes / into the air.
To wake to the sound of Marwa seeping through the bowl of a sarod / That rests over the limbs of a woman in the balcony—or not. / To follow the melody across rooms, beyond the descending sun, /. Into the kitchen—or not. A call and response—or not.
sun bears are the smallest bear species / the 2nd smallest bear species is / not the moon bear although they are / relatively small when compared / to other bears such as polar bears