Swallowed Whole
Recently, on vacation, I saw a blue heron catch and eat a fish.
In its middle, the fish was a good deal larger than the heron’s
slender neck.
Looking out subway windows, sparks fly, light up
graffiti tags in this dark, rat-infested tunnel
I am hurtling through. Ideas leap to mind:
violence, poverty, being born with very little
real opportunity. I’ve been taught these ideas.
The heron brought the fish on land, pecked into it
repeatedly until it was good and dead,
then somehow managed to swallow it whole.
Can I have an original idea? It all feels collaborative,
this living of life. My original ideas are the smallest
of perceptions.
I’ve been taught, too, the importance of graffiti
as urban art, street culture expressed. I’ve rounded
many corners, blown back by a mural with teeth.
In a class I took, one theory-loving student asked
a particularly earnest student if he meant HOPE
ironically in his piece. My small perception was
astonishment that she really could not grasp
where he was coming from.
Can art create a better world? Not a prettier,
better decorated world, not even a more
thought-provoking one, but a world where
people suffer less?
The heron killed the fuck out of that fish, and yet
the idea leaping to mind was how impressive, how
possible that heron had made what seemed impossible.
I am 40. I am starting to question this writing of poems business.
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Amanda J. Bradley released two books of poems from NYQ Books: Oz at Night in 2011 and Hints and Allegations in 2009. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in many journals such as Paterson Literary Review, Ragazine, Gargoyle, Rattle, Pirene’s Fountain, and Toronto Quarterly. Amanda earned a Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Washington University in Saint Louis and an MFA in Poetry Writing from The New School in Manhattan.
