Pantoum

I find it harder and harder these days to be surprised.  Maybe I can blame it on my age, or, more likely, a lifetime of vigilance over-exercised.  If I’m constantly trying to anticipate what will happen next, it’s nearly impossible to be truly surprised. In any event, pencil and notebook in hand, in front of works of art at a writer’s workshop conducted at the Art Institute of Chicago, I found myself very pleasantly surprised.

An experience I’ve wanted to try, this one was short and sweet.  Little more than a taste; a toe in the water with the choice to plunge right in or hastily retreat to the shore.  To be honest, it was a little of both for me.  I struggled in the first session, faced with imagining what was going on in the heads of subjects in paintings, famous and not.  But, thankfully, the instructors moved us around quickly, never left to stew too long in stagnant juices. 

The second session was a different story.  The beauty of one particular writing exercise being I had no idea where I was going with it, nor any expectation for an end product.  The instructors asked us to highlight words or phrases that spoke to us from the first week’s writing, and to combine them with the same from the second week, in the form of a poem with a very prescriptive formula for repetition from stanza to stanza.  The process left me free to combine thoughts from totally unrelated subject matter into a new message.  With a little editing and intentional application of punctuation, I present my poem; a testament to the moment we live in. 

A country erupts;

slaughter dresses the table.

Its humanity in chains,

voices dying to speak.

Slaughter dresses the table.

Bound together in shameful silence,

voices dying to speak

stories the world aches to hear.

Bound together in shameful silence,

tongues hang out in defeat.

Stories the world aches to hear,

never to be believed.

Tongues hang out in defeat.

Mirrors reflect indifference

never to be believed.

Vacant stares graze the horizon.

Mirrors reflect indifference;

a country erupts.

Vacant stares graze the horizon:

It's humanity in chains.  

-- Sharon Feller, October 6, 2018