(The) Abashed by Evan Kennedy

Danger from others provoked

a change in my internal

law. I was no flawed creature,

but the unpersuaded

sure made their case

with their brutality.

They tied me to a fence, began

thrashing the life out of me.

If the meek deserve

to jubilee, in what bodies

are we to defend our selves

and supple registers

of bonum. It’s time to confess

I was never cruising for

this bruising but maybe

just cruising

toward a rapid intercession

of effervescent affection

that could gift a beneficent

fever among us.

 

 

                         Angels arrived to inhospitality,

                         and I hear my body still groan in that aftermath.

  

❖

I am my desire. Grew up a screw-up

but bucked up a fuck-up,

each thing I took into my nine holes

was rotting, obviously. What perils

when asleep, when en route,

in the sea, in the wilderness

somehow I made it through.

When beside myself, I spotted

an antidote toward

a reversal in all places my biology

doomed me.

True witness was clarified

by my thighs, chest, and throat. To

quote that it’s flesh and it’s not—

Now from my

1394 Utah Street room,

a couple of blocks away,

a strangers’ elegy sinks toward

Earth. To keep watch of community

beyond a shame that stills me—

We’ve been put outside

the populace to offset their enmity.

 

❖

Singing on my way back to

Assisi a sissy, I’m thrown into a ditch.

It’s my bitch of a knee failing me 

after so much cycling that groans

as though flesh has worthy feeling.

These thieves think

I’m a rich troubadour, despite

my nasal whine and valedictory hymn—

the one about poverty, or maybe

I am that bad of a mumbler?

Since I’m not much of

a stumbler, it’s a whim to be made

inert through violence cops not long ago

would round up the likes of me

along Market Street so thanks, men,

for making this human a humble

and stilled thing, alive only

unto your forces. Earth will be

a swallower of your corpses.

 

❖

Made of dirt, would I know what

dirt tastes like. While I was cycling,

the earth and I

exceeded living bodies’ partitions.

Wishing that the strewn parts of

you long gone ones

would reassemble in a gust

of florescence and soundtracks,

I promise my legs can brace

for any supple clamor.

If the dead all rise age thirty,

at twenty-nine,

still ahead is my finest glamour.

Thus I became a hammer

to darkest anti-matter. Thus

I became a ticking time bomb

of kingdom expectation in

my gray hoodie and sharp teeth.

 

The rain this morning falls   

on the last of the snow 

and will wash it away. I can smell   

the grass again, and the torn leaves 

being eased down into the mud.   

The few loves I’ve been allowed 

to keep are still sleeping 

on the West Coast. Here in Virginia 

I walk across the fields with only   

a few young cows for company. 

Big-boned and shy, 

they are like girls I remember 

from junior high, who never   

spoke, who kept their heads 

lowered and their arms crossed against   

their new breasts. Those girls 

are nearly forty now. Like me,   

they must sometimes stand 

at a window late at night, looking out   

on a silent backyard, at one 

rusting lawn chair and the sheer walls   

of other people’s houses. 

They must lie down some afternoons   

and cry hard for whoever used 

to make them happiest,   

and wonder how their lives 

have carried them 

this far without ever once 

explaining anything. I don’t know   

why I’m walking out here 

with my coat darkening 

and my boots sinking in, coming up 

with a mild sucking sound   

I like to hear. I don’t care 

where those girls are now.   

Whatever they’ve made of it 

they can have. Today I want   

to resolve nothing. 

I only want to walk 

a little longer in the cold 

blessing of the rain,   

and lift my face to it.

Kim Addonizio

  

back to top