AWP13: From Arc and Architecture to Falling Apart at the Seams

So take a day. Call it Day One.

Head to a tiny room crammed with participants and panel members. Give it shape, design, but not necessarily enough room. Fill the audience, every seat taken, every nook, every cranny, every inch. Security closes off hopeful participants from leaning in at the door. There is no more room, no entrance, no way. The fabulous five—Mary Kay Zuravleff, Lan Samantha Chang, Bich Minh Nguyen, Porter Shreve, and Hannah Tinti—sneak in from the fire exit. Ready, set? 

Porter says straight ahead, cross country. Sam says 10 pages a day. Bich says TK! To come! Hannah looks at the crowd and says, I don’t know, then pulls out five skeins of yarn and plots her novel back and forth across the crowded room. Mary Kay promises lightning strikes. In other words, How to Keep Track of Your Novel!

Wander through poems and essays of the Afghan Women Writers Project and be moved by the courage of women giving voice to their cause.

Meander through the Hynes Conference Center and stare at the blowing snow outside.

Rave at the readings of the poets of The Darkroom Collective! Roger Reeves, Sharon Strange, John Keene, Tisa Bryant, Kevin Young, Thomas Sayers Ellis with saxophone! And Tracy K. Smith. Add Natasha Trethewey to introduce and shake!

No, you’re not done yet.

Pay tribute. Jake Adam York is honored beyond belief, so beautifully, so bravely. Take it to heart: fall apart at the seams.

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First posted at Hothouse Magazine.

Jake Adam York

In Memory of Jake Adam York - 1972-2012

Jake. Adam. York.  Three names, one poet.  Florida born, Alabama raised, and gone to Colorado to teach, edit, write.  Three volumes of poetry -- Murder Ballads, A Murmuration of Starlings, and Persons Unknown.  As Natasha Trethewey writes of Murmuration, his words are "fierce, beautiful, necessary." 

Self-Portrait of the Town Where I Was Born
West Palm Beach, Florida

The smell of the ocean,
the brine, must be

the first smell,
the smell of beginning.

Age is everything else.
Fish and skin,

asphalt and gasoline,
volatile as moonshine in the heat,

a shower's galvanized water 
peppering the air

and the ash of a campfire
the tide's raked out,

thin sugar of beer
and a tea of flotsam and bait

a wave could strew on the sand
and return to claim again.

A child climbs from the surf,
and we walk away.

We drive with the windows down,
beach and its high-rise barrier behind,

Belle Glade and Okeechobee
beyond the low storm of pines,

when the tang of hickory snares us,
pulls us over the tracks

and past the liquor store
to a squat block front,

its yard a wreck
of stumps and logs.

Inside, he menu's compendious--
conch, shrimp, crab--

and vinegar sharpens the air,
so strong for once

we forget the ocean.
We wait, almost alone.

A girl sits, opposite us,
baby on her shoulder.

As pitmen shout behind the counter,
as cleavers fall,

she watches us.
And then she asks

What y'all doing here?

The knives are moving,
but it seems quiet,

and I almost answer
I was born here,

almost say we came
to find that first place,

or we were lost
when we caught the smell,

or we were hungry
and someone showed us here.

But this is a question
of contrast, not motive.

This is the moment
we become visible,

when we emerge or develop,
the only whites in a block or two.

What would the camera see?
Wood paneling behind us,

wall sawed open for another AC,
sauce-red paint on all the sills,

peeling in the salt and breeze,
and someone,

there,
on the edge of the frame,

leaning on a car, as if watching
or talking back to me.

It's late,
and now everyone is watching,

waiting as I take a breath--
vinegar and brine

in the rising wind--
everyone waiting

for the sound I'll make,
the first word I'll say.

Copyright © 2010 Jake Adam York All rights reserved
from Persons Unknown 
Southern Illinois University Press 

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