Southern Poetry Review: Julie Suk

The Southern Poetry Review has introduced readers to some of the best poets in the country, many of them from the South.   As promised, here is Julie Suk's splendid poem from the Winter issue.  Julie has a new book out from Autumn House Press, Lie Down With Me: New and Selected Poems.   She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.


SPR has just published a gathering of poems published in the magazine over the last ten years.  More about that in a later post.

BRUEGHEL IN THE HYDRANGEAS

Aging through August, the hydrangeas 

turn from pastels to brick and bronze,

the same rich colors tempering

Brueghel’s Triumph of Death,

that ravaging depiction of pillage and war—

the myriad mutilations 

we foolishly thought we would modify.

When we die, will our last glimpse be

of brilliance, a smear of color scumbled 

over the sour realities left behind?

I wish, but then I look with envy

at two lovers in the painting 

having at it under a tree, 

the pair of them entwined,

her head thrown back, the creamy neck 

exposed as long as paint holds.

Better than years of scrubbing 

the resilience of dirt,

cheeks graying along the way.

True, Brueghel’s faces are never 

Valentine sweet—

you can depend on a darkness there

brooding below the pink.

SOUTHERN POETRY REVIEW: Kathryn Kirkpatrick

The current issue of Southern Poetry Review features, as always, memorable poems

 by some of our best poets, oftentimes friends of mine.  This issue includes several

 friends--Janice Townley Moore, Mike Chitwood,  Kathryn Kirkpatrick, and Julie Suk.  

Today I'm posting Kathryn's "Shine,"with a plug both for her most recent book, 

Unaccountable Weather (Press 53).   Tomorrow, I will post Julie Suk's poem.

Come back!

Shine

Saturdays as a child I spread newspaper
for forthright oxfords, coy high heels,
dabbed each scuff and toe with paste,
then smoothed, brushed, and buffed,
until each pair, restored, stood equal
to the world it was to meet, 

and myself lost in the motion,
mindful before I knew the practice,
cross-legged in a cove of spare delight,
attending, attending, as if the shoes
I mended walked their own meditation,
my child’s hand slipped toward each sole,
held up, inspected, admired until
the shine, the shine came true.

A dime a pair, repair the wear.
Stay against the sadness.
And I see him, my father,
with his small task to offer,
work his conversation, 
work his steady state.

All afternoon at the slow motion
of waxing a car with Turtle paste,
the circular hum, his way of saying
here is the stay, the raw delight, 
the feel of the task so surely done, 
it sounds a tuning in your bones.