What thoughts and images does this poem evoke for you?
To Muck and Muck and Muck
Here I am yet again, seeking
something more, something
else in another country.
Transformation, aren’t you
a fist-sized bird? All claws
and low-yield clutches. You are
also this stew of the overused
Ganges, where we ride in a boat,
watch bodies burn on shore.
Last to go is the rib cage.
Sometimes, that even refuses
the flame. No matter. Belief
dictates that everyone cremated
on this sacred shore goes
to heaven, whatever the sin.
No wonder air is so thick.
Dusk now, and floating cups
of candles in bamboo cradles
outrun our boat, bobble down
this holy river science deems
septic: long emptied of oxygen,
toxic to touch. A mother dips
her hand into the waste. Drink,
my love. Drink, she demands
of her child, limp on her lap.
Charlotte Pence’s first full-length poetry collection, Spike, will be released by Black Lawrence Press in 2014. A professor of English and creative writing at Eastern Illinois University, she is also the author of two award-winning poetry chapbooks and the editor of The Poetics of American Song Lyrics (University Press of Mississippi, 2012).
Photo Credit: Bird In Flight by Andy Doyle is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Rebecca Napier-Brown
Charlotte Pence is a talented poet. I always enjoy her stuff.
–Rebecca Napier-Brown