Response Ability

I would do anything

To trade places with that image

That I had in my head that I can’t write down

What I was told

What I heard

Left me speechless

And at the time words were essential

They should have been words of joy

Encouragement

Celebration

Rejuvenation. Congratulation

Friday the 13^th

We were still shouting at each other when I opened the champagne

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I’ll never tell

There is mass in my throat

I swallow

Don’t Choke.

The mass is still there

I’m still suffocating.

I can still breath?

My lungs still work. Surprising me.

What is this knot in my throat?

I know…

It’s the tangle of words I cannot bring myself to say

Choking me.

They clog my tears too

So I do not cry.

A damn.

Concrete

Poured down my throat until I can not speak at all.

Passing me in the street you would never know

I’ll never tell

Spin the Globe

Spin the World

Why this?

I picked the International Conversation hour because of my desire to travel. One of my favorite things to do as a child was sit in front of the globe we own, close my eyes, spin it, and drag my finger across the smooth surface until it slowed to a stop. I would then open my eyes and wherever my finger landed that’s where I told myself I would go.

Occasionally I had to cheat because, inevitably, my finger would land in the middle of the ocean. That intrigue and that wonder is something that I carried, and still carry, to this day. I want to know about anything that’s not the United States but, like most people, I don’t actively seek out more knowledge on the matter. To be perfectly honest, I am rather naïve when it comes to other cultures and countries.

Going into this I was a little nervous due to the positions I held. I am a white female who’s never been outside the South, let alone the United States. I do not speak any other languages, except for basic Spanish, and I haven’t been on a study abroad trip. The only thing that really put me “in with the crowd” was the fact that I am a Georgia Southern student, just like them.

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Struggling with Words


Struggling with words—
like learning to dance, or memorizing jazz,
or courtship, one’s last—                           
is worth it. Though with all these,               
I stammer as I reach my void of vision—     
          the blindness behind my eyes,     
          my fence of expression.                             
                                                                              
The slipperiest words show best
how context gives them taste—
tart and sweet—and lodges them,
      mossy and furrowed                             
      like the pit of a peach.      
 
So this struggle persists,                                
since when it succeeds
thoughts and feelings find their mates,    
and I renew my belief:                                        
clear words connect us                                               
      like the air that we breathe.  
 
And in spite of the murk,
we thrust our words forward
hoping to reveal and capture it all:
crafting words even for the absence of things, like    
         shadows and sky and death and blank,   
         and the something in the nothing
                  of negative space.
 
Leaning over the waves, we tack our way.                  
We trim the sails of letters and speech,                          
plunging black waters, shaping the wind,                              .
          searching beyond and beneath.  
                                                                                   
 

 
  

Walking the Figure Eight
 

Across an autumn landscape we walked     
with asymmetric interests in one another.  
 
We talked about art, as we couldn’t us.
We looped through this ruse, and I made my case
for paintings that draw me in and out.       
 
You countered with sculpture because it is solid,     
inserting a certainty in a world often soft.   
 
And though I was prone to be strong and stable,   
by you, I trembled like a branch in a storm.
 
But you were as sure as you were subtle,     
like the leaves that floated past your body,      
elusive as the plans made at dances.
 
Still I waltzed through this canvas,
taking my chance, while you—
a marble goddess—sat it out.
  
 
                                          
                                                           
 

A Prophesy of Black Holes

If we were creatures   
at the bottom of dark oceans— 
close descendants of our planet’s first life—  
perhaps we would share a sacred belief:   
           
            One that pictures our final deliverance
            from the lowly rocks of birth and death
            to a place above the cloud-dropped mirrors
            breaking upon our roof—
            far beyond the bands of light
            streaming overhead.   
           
            And in this space, where we’ll ascend,
            there’s an infinite hole—
            the black of starless nights,                 
            where we will live, forever unchanged,          
            and illumination will disappear,
            eclipsing the need for sight.     
 
 
And we’d be certain of this belief  
since it was told by ancient blind prophets
who came to our murk from the waters above,   
warning that vision goads temptation  
and is a curse that should be shunned.
                                                                                        

  
 
 

My home on the web is www.johnmiddlebrookpoet.com, and here, you can find the details of my publication history. I live in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where I manage a consulting firm focused on non-profit organizations. I have been writing poetry since I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, where I also served on the poetry staff of Chicago Review.