Read a poem, talk about it, read it again.

Episode 30: Epithalamion

2/9/2018

Connor and Jack discuss Jordan Rice's "Epithalamion."

To read the poem, see below or go here. To check out her collection Constellarium. For the 2paragraphs article referenced in the podcast.

Epithalamion
By: Jordan Rice

From here, nowhere’s absent shame. The body’s
rumored dissolute for its mutability. Even speech—

the clear-spoke & the speaking, my mind’s aroar in
hoary rasp. No voice carries. I try every one, even

apology & rhetoric: the apsis of our fall. Listen.

Around us whirs the sex I’m to become—violent,
exact. I etch up another voice within your silence.

Say I’m sorry. Say I am sorry. Say again I had no choice.
I lost one self to this other & killed our child’s father.

He’ll keep me in old photos: thin frame, red beard.
Barbarossa, our priest once called me. What will he

tell our son?     —Your father disappeared. Speaking
with the dead makes witchery. He transubstantiated.

There was no sign of this proclivity when I bound

them at the wrists & blessed them by our custom.
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