On September 5, 2014, NPR ran an by critic Juan Vidal titled, “Where Have All the Poets Gone?” which suggested that American poets no longer write political work. Because I find this assessment of contemporary American letters to be very incomplete, I wanted to take the opportunity to create a dialogue on the subject by curating a series of compelling political poems from contemporary American poets. I christened this series “Political Punch” as an affectionate reflection on the cocktail of poets who decided to honor me with their participation in my little Infoxicated Corner; it was intended to celebrate the glorious mix of poetics, voices, and life experiences all being shaken and stirred into a sense of community and conversation, being distilled into burning gulps of experience for the reader. Leaving aside all the boozed-up metaphors, it was also intended to celebrate my experience of American letters, in all their willingness and ability to pack a political punch.
Anne Barngrover’s poem, however, brings an added dimension: it will punch you in the face. Brace yourselves.
Incident in Northwestern Missouri
(For Daisy Coleman, who was drugged, raped and left for dead in freezing
temperatures in Maryville, Missouri, the night of January 8, 2012, and who—
despite years of enduring peer and media bullying that escalated into multiple
suicide attempts and running her family out of town ((but so far no rape sentence
for the perpetrator, a popular high school football player))—has survived.)
Who’s to say I haven’t thrown back
what storm was left in me and tried not to visit God,
but the night they burned down
your house, Daisy, I wasn’t thinking
about prayer. You could be almost
anywhere (very red and very bruised) almost any girl
(no socks no coat no shoes) whose family
dogs were trained to bark for a child
of a rabbit, a child of a deer, and you—
left for dead, bloodletting the snow in your front lawn
(frostbite on hands and feet,
icy chunks in frozen hair). Daisy, more and more
these nights I wake to something sharp
as gunshots, to the garbled plastic sound
of what happens after words choke
and dissolve and I’m the only one who hears.
The night you tried to kill yourself
for the second time you saw ghosts and no one
believed you, did they?
A girl scarcely lives and she’s a lie
so in my new house, I scatter cinnamon
like a séance and rub down the cabinets with vinegar.
I claim it’s to rid the ants but ritual,
Daisy, is what keeps us going and I don’t need
to tell you what it looks like underneath a scar.
It’s a lake, a forest, or worse—because we could
be anywhere but we’re here
in Missouri where fences don’t appear electric
yet warn against hands, our houses smolder
from matches lit by politicians’ sons and football kings
and where a godforsaken heart
becomes a self-fulfilled prophecy for those
who’ve forgotten how to pray, and Daisy,
could we blame them? After all, you know how forgiveness
is crumbled starlight in the trees
and salvation (she is nothing!) rises ugly as healing skin.
Anne Barngrover is a PhD student in Poetry at University of Missouri and author of Yell Hound Blues (Shipwreckt Books, 2013). Her poems have appeared in Indiana Review, Gulf Coast, Mid-American Review, and others. She and poet Avni Vyas are co-authors of the chapbook Candy in Our Brains (CutBank, 2014).
