POETS Day: James Matthew Wilson’s XIII from The Hanging God
It is here once again. It’s Friday, Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Revel in the acronymal joy that celebrates the opportunity to skip out the work fantastic, leave your co-workers in the rearview, and hit the bar by three? Maybe you wait till four o’clock when you know everyone in your office is swapping glances between the bottom right of their toolbar, to the stupid battery operated black and white analog timepiece somewhere over a bathroom or breakroom, and hoping beyond hope that someone else in the room musters the courage to just get up and go a few minutes early and lend cover to the herd escaping behind them.
This week’s escape plot involves man’s inherent self-centeredness in contrast with man’s general ignorance of the center of his self. A quick glance at the National Science Board stats reveals that it doesn’t even have a breakdown of how many students take anatomy. They have numbers on biology, but that can mean a few months about Gregor Mendel and a few pressed opinions on sweet pea heredity followed by an uncomfortable cutting session with a fetal pig. An even less thorough look into college anatomy students show that a large number withdraw or fail. Basically we have little to no idea what’s in us past a belly that sometimes aches, genitalia, and that knee that gave out and kept us from a promising pro career.
P.O.E.T.S. Day can use this wonderful ignorance.
Tell your boss you’ve been poking around online wondering about that mid to side chest pain you’re having. You don’t have to go full heart issues. I’d start with the spleen or gall bladder. The pancreas isn’t a bad choice. No one knows exactly where these are (full on warning to those that work in the health professions – DO NOT DO THIS UNLESS YOU HAVE ALL MANNER OF SCAN PAYING INSURANCE) so you should be able to beg off, claim a doctor’s visit, and show up on Monday with an over the counter bottle of 20mg Omeprazole and claim heartburn. It’s not perfect, but it will get you a few beers before this Friday’s DIV-1AA Quarter Final between Montana and James Madison.
It’s a solid plan. It may take a bit of improv, but just don’t say anything that needs corroboration from anyone easily reached and you’re golden.
This week’s poem is from my current favorite contemporary poet.
Pre-marriage and of the roving bar-hopping age I used to hang out at The Garage Café. In the ladies room was a prosaic tribute to my best friend of the time. On the red tiled walls was written in black sharpie “Bill _________ rocks Birmingham girl’s world!”
I thought it was hysterical. He didn’t. He felt like it was an indictment and something that would, contrary to the bathroom wall PR, keep him from rocking Birmingham girls’ world[s] as they may see him in a, to him, unfair light. He was worried it made him look promiscuous in the eyes of those that he hoped to be promiscuous with.
I loved that bar.
I had a friend take a semester in Glasgow and when she got back a group of us met her at the Café and she was telling us about her time overseas when the daughter of my parent’s friends walked in. Through mom I knew that she had just spent a year in Edinburgh. I invited her to join us. Suddenly it’s three in the morning and my parents’ friend’s daughter with a splint in Edinburgh and I were the only ones left in the place. That was 1998. Three years of dating, almost twenty years of marriage, and two children later, I’m still with that friend of my parents’ daughter.
I can’t blame Bill from being mad about his unsolicited women’s room advertisement. He had intermittent success and adlessly I stumbled into a wonderful life.
Sixteen years ago my wife told me she was pregnant and our bar hopping days were curtailed. You tend not to go out as much with kids at home, but we’d venture on occasion. A few years ago I asked her to keep guard while I went into the women’s room to see if Bill was still on the wall. He wasn’t. It was washed away and I’ve no idea how long ago his legend was Yezhoved. In fairness, he’s the same victim of age as I am but it might not that the ravages of time had a role. He moved to Florida in the mid oughts, so maybe he’s rocking Tampa/St. Pete’s girls’ world now days.
The poet Wilson writes from a deeply Catholic perspective. I’ve written about this elsewhere but from the book’s introduction by Dana Giola:
“The formal principles governing The Hanging God are not limited to individual poems. They appear even in the overall design of the book, which unfolds in six sections built around two long poetic sequences. One depicts a sordid and destructive love affair, the other describes the Passion of Christ. The two long poems stand in symmetrical and audaciously contrasting positions.”
But this is the one that stands out to me. A man walks into a bar, approaches the figure of authority and with her loan of a sharpie goes into the women’s room; a small place where he confronts and marks out his sins as written on the walls. It is a confessional, and it is beautiful.
The Hanging God as a book is a demonstration of the poet’s ability. He refuses to be bound by any one style as he shows an affinity for many. This poem, simply titled XIII, runs a really fun rhyme scheme: ababbcbccdcdee. It’s wonderful and keeps to ten syllables on every line except five and seven where there is an eleventh, but as per usual in such matters I can be convinced that maybe I pronounced something as the poet wouldn’t. A dip-thong is a dangerous thing.
XIII
James Matthew Wilson (I can’t find a birth date but his picture looks spritely and he’s still going so let’s just call it 1990 – ?? and be done)
The bartender stood playing with her black
Hair, combing it down one tan tattooed shoulder.
Too early yet for college kids to pack
The smokey booths and beer-soaked rugs, some older
Drunks nursed the happy hour specials. When I told her
Why I’d come, she just held a sharpie out,
And said, “The men’s room’s by the smokes,” not colder
But less surprised than you would think. The grout
And tiles were flecked like the scales on a trout
Starved in a murky tank, and, on the wall,
In black, my name and failings all spelled out.
I scored the marker through her words, so all
Was wiped out with my strokes. When it was done,
Our lines were sealed in that dark block as one.
