may week 1: may day!

Patrick Rosal, “Brokeheart: just like that”
 
When the bass drops on Bill Withers’
Better Off Dead, it’s like 7 a.m.
and I confess I’m looking
over my shoulder once or twice
just to make sure no one in Brooklyn
is peeking into my third-floor window
to see me in pajamas I haven’t washed
for three weeks before I slide
from sink to stove in one long groove
left foot first then back to the window side
with my chin up and both fists clenched
like two small sacks of stolen nickels
and I can almost hear the silver
hit the floor by the dozens
when I let loose and sway a little back
and just like that I’m a lizard grown
two new good legs on a breeze
-bent limb. I’m a grown-ass man
with a three-day wish and two days to live.
And just like that everyone knows
my heart’s broke and no one is home.
Just like that, I’m water.
Just like that, I’m the boat.
Just like that, I’m both things in the whole world
rocking. Sometimes sadness is just
what comes between the dancing. And bam!,
my mother’s dead and, bam!, my brother’s
children are laughing. Just like—ok, it’s true
I can’t pop up from my knees so quick these days
and no one ever said I could sing but
tell me my body ain’t good enough
for this. I’ll count the aches another time,
one in each ankle, the sharp spike in my back,
this mud-muscle throbbing in my going bones,
I’m missing the six biggest screws
to hold this blessed mess together. I’m wind-
rattled. The wood’s splitting. The hinges are
falling off. When the first bridge ends,
just like that, I’m a flung open door.
 
Patrick Rosal, “Brokeheart: just like that” from The Last Thing: New and Selected Poems. Originally in Poem-A-Day on April 18, 2014. Copyright © 2014, 2021 by Patrick Rosal. Reprinted with permission of Persea Books, Inc (New York), www.perseabooks.com. All rights reserved.
 
Craig Santos Perez, “Ars Pasifika”
 
when the tide
 
of silence
 
rises
 
say “ocean”
 
then with the paddle
 
of your tongue
 
rearrange
 
the letters to form
 
“canoe”
​
 Copyright © Craig Santos Perez. Used by permission of the author, all rights reserved.
 

Lucille Clifton, “blessing the boats” 
                        (at St. Mary’s)
may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back            may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that
 
Lucille Clifton, “blessing the boats” from How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton. Copyright ©1991 by Lucille Clifton. Reprinted with permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boeditions.org.
 
 
POETIC THEMES
            May Day, the celebration of all things sensual, is essentially the victory of life against death. The central way to celebrate the holiday is by dancing. The language of “Brokeheart” is a mature maypole dance, all rhythm section, beating out the dance of sliding “from sink to stove in one long groove / left foot first then back to the window side / with my chin up and both fists clenched….” It’s not until late in the poem that the dancer confesses he’s older than he’d like to be. In the first half, we’re just let loose and lost in the movement with sassy lines of slippery enjambments interspersed with staccato end-stops like “I’m a lizard grown / two new good legs on a breeze- / bent limb.” “Just like that” keeps operating like the high hat, breaking up the tongue-twister consonance. But then—“bam!”—it all comes flooding in. The sadness, the age, the vulnerable, injured, falling-apart self who can’t sing and has no mother. This “grown-ass man / with a three-day wish and two days to live” reveals his aching, throbbing hurts and limitations, because, as the poem so succinctly points out, “Sometimes sadness is just / what comes between the dancing.”
            But what’s perfect is the way we have been suspended in the music of the poem enough to forget our own aches and pains, and when we are reminded of them, maybe we can still feel these lines from the inside: “but / tell me my body ain’t good enough / for this.” And speaking of good-enough bodies, what a wonderful message of solace in the “Just like thats” of becoming water and boat and both, just rocking. Be your own boat!
            To bring home Rosal’s comforting boat-ification, I’d like to synch it up with these two short boat poems, by Lucille Clifton and by Craig Santos Perez. Santos Perez instructs, lovingly: when you feel thrown around by the rising tide, rearrange “with the paddle of your tongue” the letters of the word “ocean” to form “canoe.” Clifton gives us a blessing. Less than 60 words, in small letters with no punctuation, just the lulling repetition of “may the…” “may you…” “may you…”—like waves on the ocean. And in a time when the future is uncertain, this symbol of eternity is welcome, this “water waving forever.” She gives us four simple blessings: that we be carried beyond fear, kiss the wind and trust it, open our eyes, and sail. This is past the lip of our understanding, she says. We are innocent, she tells us. There is another shore, she tells us. We will make it, she tells us. The feeling of the wind in our sails. Open heart, brave face to the wind, all.
 
 
PRACTICE
            To embody a flung-open door, we could try to open every little molecule of the torso to breath. Cracking the heart open, could we create enough space to feel that strange ache behind the sternum? You might lay yourself out supine on pillows, so your chest is buoyed and your head is slightly higher, feet together with knees open, and imagine your body as a boat, rocking on water. Three-part breathing gives the impression of a watery wave. As though filling up the container of your torso, breathe one third into the pelvis and low belly, two thirds into the upper abdomen, and fill up to the notch of the throat, and empty out each chamber sequentially from the top to the bottom. Moving from the bowl of the hips, the seat of water, on up to the base of the breastbone, it’s lovely to visualize the bob of the sternum on your breath, like a canoe on the waves.