Pet Sounds by Stephanie Young

Author:Stephanie Young
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Nightboat Books
Published: 2020-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

the poem is long, like life

soupy, thick with it

I go away with not men to the country

you are in rehearsal again

a play about solitary confinement

you are the white man in this play

a swastika will be painted on your chest

and neck every night before the show

I wonder will an outline remain

when you wash it off, what will it be like

for the next six weeks

you are frustrated that the script

depicts the white man as having moved

beyond his racism, that his speech

after years of silence instigates the hunger strike

at Pelican Bay, a multiracial coalition, a play of uplift

sort of. you are frustrated with many things

not depicted there that might have made it more

like life, uncomfortable, or more clear

how those men arrived together

at the point of striking. it can’t have been easy.

we argue over this. but a script is not a play

and I think that tattoo will do a lot of work

language can’t. your character’s unabashed

sexism though

remains

in dialogue

I’m scared of everything

like a dog, it’s all exciting

putting on mascara

waiting for the tree people

Yedda told us their name

but not what they do, she saw my face

and stopped. when I was little

I thought closed for the season

was a horror film. we agree

the country scares us more

country cops, 400 acres

when the road narrows

then the pavement runs out

narrows again, a bridge, a gate

a padlock, a combination

scares me most

when it opens onto a meadow

a house in a clearing

anything I have

once I understand

I have it

Prageeta Sharma is writing about

Dale Edwin Sherrard, 1961-2015

Prageeta’s husband

Dale died last year

he was 53 years old

his memoir is called When You Could Smoke on Airplanes

I watch the videos as Prageeta posts them

read her Cassavetes poem, the one Dale loved

about teaching about race

in Montana, and men

I don’t know Prageeta

I didn’t know Dale

you were born in 1961, the same as Dale

Prageeta was born in 1972, a few years before me

she is writing through it, in public

says closure happens for her through talking

or closure isn’t closure but openings

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