PAULA WHYMAN

So here we are at the tail end of National Poetry Month. I haven't posted about it, because there have been many thoughtful posts by poets and literary journals and poet-bloggers, and wonderful poems written by talented people, too many to mention. I've simply enjoyed reading them.

As a fiction writer, I very rarely try to write poetry, and trust me, this is a good thing. But here is a story about a poem I once wrote:

When I was nine, I was riding in a car, and the car in front of us hit a deer crossing the road. The deer landed on the shoulder and lay there in distress. We happened to be across from a penitentiary. A couple of guards came up and began to discuss the deer. One of them thought it might be good to shoot it. The other was talking about whether it could then be taken away for food. Meanwhile, the deer lay there with a gaping wound, its ribs exposed as if it had been skinned. Its side was heaving, and its eyes were glassy, and of course I thought it looked afraid. This was all a bit much for a nine-year-old to take. And my mother, who was driving our car, was near tears. Later that night, I wrote a poem about it. I had written very few poems up until then (sticking with fiction even at that age), and I've written even fewer poems since. But my mother still thinks it's one of the best things I ever wrote. (Um, thanks...) Don't worry I'm not going to post it!!

I was chatting with a friend about posting poems in honor of Poetry Month, and he said, instead, why don't you blog about NOT posting poems? I'm sure I should listen to that advice! And yet, I'm going to go out on a limb and post a poem anyway, because even though I don't even know how to write one, in keeping with the theme of the month, I thought it would be fun to try. And once I tried, by the way, I'm sure everyone will be relieved to know, I immediately went back to writing stories.

I was on an airplane recently, studying the emergency instruction card and thinking that when your plane comes to a sudden stop, say, against a mountain, it's unlikely to help if you are bent over holding your ankles. So I wrote this:

Brace Positions

While seated
you can try to bend in half,
reach down and grasp your ankles.
In this position,
you will look like you lost something.
In this position,
you cannot sleep,
But you can count the fibers in the carpet
while you wait.

You can try to lean forward,
rest your forehead against the seat back in front of you,
grip the top of the seat
with your crossed hands,
hide your face
between your forearms.
In this position,
you will look like you’re praying.
In this position,
you can smell the vinyl
and count the seconds.
In this position,
you will look like you’ve given up.