Red Letter Poem #146

 The Red Letters

 

 

In ancient Rome, feast days were indicated on the calendar by red letters.  To my mind, all poetry and art serves as a reminder that every day we wake together beneath the sun is a red-letter day.

 

                                                                                                          – Steven Ratiner

 

 

 

To the Red Letter community:

 

Many who received the announcement that I’d completed my third and final term as Arlington’s Laureate wrote in to offer their appreciation – but also to ask, with a certain anxiousness: did that mean the Red Letters would come to an end?  I am happy to let you know that I will continue the Letters for as long as I have fine poems worth sharing and engaged readers to receive them.  And thank you for all your kind thoughts.

 

 

 

 

Red Letter Poem #146

 

 

 

 

This poem by Julia Lisella is not the one I was planning to share with you today.  In fact, I’d already written the introduction to a different selection from her new book Our Lively Kingdom (Bordighera Press), when circumstances demanded I change course. 

 

On Sunday, in yet another murderous rampage, a gunman opened fire at the Star Ballroom in Monterey Park, California.  Eleven innocent lives were snatched away and nine others were wounded.  The victims had done nothing more offensive than attend a celebration of the Lunar New Year, and it seems likely it was their Asian ancestry that made them a target.  Penning my first draft on Sunday night, I mentioned that this constituted the 33^rd mass shooting of our new year, not yet four weeks old (this, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit research group.)  By Monday evening, as I struggled to revise this Red Letter and clarify my thoughts, that total had already been increased by two.  How can we not see this rampant violence as anything but a symptom of something desperately wrong in the health of our nation.  And perhaps more damning: as, year after year, our people are outraged by such dark events, our elected officials do nothing more to respond to the problem than to wring their hands and express sympathy.  And we the people – from whom they borrowed the power to legislate, to help shape our evolving society – we shake our heads, grief-stunned, as if we are helpless to make any difference.  That is an act of self-deception from which we must struggle to free ourselves.  It is possible to make inaction more costly to officials – concerned, as always, about re-election – than the anger from vocal lobbyists that substantive action would bring.  Saner approaches to gun safety are common in many other nations.  When a mass shooting in 2019 occurred at the Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, within six days their Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had not only marshalled her nation to condemn such a terrorist act, she’d pioneered gun reform legislation that would help prevent its reoccurrence.  Six days.  How can America not feel ashamed by our complete failure to act?

 

But I remembered there was another poem in Julia’s collection, one imbued with the sort of painful beauty only a mother might create.  It was composed after the 2016 mass shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, where 49 lost their lives.  But the poem’s dedication quietly acknowledged the sad rollcall of events that preceded it, and hinted at the unnamed list of tragedies that would inevitably follow.  Sometimes a poet simply feels called to bear witness – to not simply turn the page of the morning newspaper and move on.  Yet how can one speak articulately about what such awareness does to the soul?  And so, instead, Julia chose to join us in our inarticulate grief.  By borrowing a metaphor from the world of nuclear science, she allowed her mind to tumble inside the whirlwind where facts cannot measure what has taken place – for the mothers of these victims; for the mothers and fathers everywhere who, hearing the news, looked with different eyes upon their own fragile families.

 

Let me remind us about the mythology at the heart of the Lunar New Year’s celebration, perhaps the most loved holiday in the Asian calendar.  It is believed that a terrible beast called the Nian would arise from the ocean or descend the mountain at the time of the spring festival and devour the nearby villagers, especially defenseless children.  Each year the people, terrified, went into hiding.  But finally, one old man convinced them to gather together and fight back: they decorated their village in red, a fierce color, to alarm the monster.  They set off firecrackers and banged pots and pans, alerting the Nian that an equally fierce adversary was prepared to defend all they loved.  And the beast did not return.  Perhaps we, too, will finally make some noise, feel the power of collective action.  This violence, this madness need not be a permanent condition.  Or, at the very least, we can make our leaders more frightened of our righteous anger than the Nian of the gun lobby and the most uncompromising Second Amendment advocates.  Share this installment with friends, with your civic representatives.  Today my Letter is adorned with a very different kind of Red.

 

 

 

Maternal Half Life

                       

(for Orlando and for the Others)

 

 

“In the illustration above, 50% of the original mother substance decays into a new daughter substance. After two half-lives, the mother substance will decay another 50%, leaving 25% mother and 75% daughter. A third half-life will leave 12.5% of the mother and 87.5% daughter. In reality, daughter substances can also decay, so the proportions of substance involved will vary.”



From: "What is Meant By Half Life"

 

Mornings have their half-lives as surely Mourning

does. Morning light’s half-life streams in as if

torn from night. First light becomes sunrise

into lives not yet ready. And already the light

divides and divides into the day while Mourning

shakes and shakes, trying to itself achieve half of half of half

which is infinite, bottomless,

like the bang, the plume of the machine gun

of the mad young man at odds with the body that made him

dividing and dividing the pure bodies of the 49 around him

into the halves of halves of halves of morning light.

And left in the doorways, the living rooms, the cramped kitchens,

are Mourning’s half-lives halved and halved and without end,

like the half-life of the labor pain

that circles, returns, but does not diminish,

until the torso radiant with light amazes and releases

its others whose half-lives cleave and divide again.

 

 

     ––Julia Lisella

 

 

 

The Red Letters 3.0

 

* If you would like to receive these poems every Friday in your own in-box – or would like to write in with comments or submissions – send correspondence to:

steven.arlingtonlaureate@gmail.com

 

 

* To learn more about the origins of the Red Letter Project, check out an essay I wrote for Arrowsmith Magazine:

https://www.arrowsmithpress.com/community-of-voices

 

and the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

http://dougholder.blogspot.com

 

* For updates and announcements about Red Letter projects and poetry readings, please follow me on Twitter          

@StevenRatiner