This is the first time I’ve ever put up a poem on Thursday by someone who is a friend on Facebook. Richard Jeffrey Newman’s collection The Silence of Men has been on my shelf for a while, and it’s to my discredit that I’ve taken so long to plug it and to put up one of his offerings as a Thursday Short Poem. Newman writes in a style that recalls Sharon Olds, particularly in his reflections on the body, sex, and death — but his worldview is of the deep masculine. Both tender and unsentimental, he’s produced an interesting and memorable collection. I recommend picking up a copy.
One of my favorite pieces is a long one, “Coitus Interruptus”. I’m putting up the opening section here. We’ve been talking a lot about white privilege in the feminist blogosphere lately; re-reading this poem earlier this week, I saw something here I hadn’t seen before, something about the ways in which racist reality both impinges upon — and leaves untouched — white existence.
From Coitus Interruptus
Naked at the window, my wife calls me
as if someone is dying, and someone
almost is, pinned to the concrete face down
beneath the fists and feet and knees of three
policemen. I’m still hard from before she
jumped out of bed to answer the question
I was willing not to ask when the siren
stopped on our block, but now I’m here and I see
the man is Black, and how can I not
bear witness? They’ve cuffed him
but the uniforms continue to crowd our street,
and the blue and whites keep coming
as if called to war, as if the lives
in all these darkened homes
were truly at stake, and that’s the thing —
who can tell from up here — maybe
we’re watching our salvation
without knowing it. Above our heads,
a voice calls out “Fucking pigs!”
but the ones who didn’t drag the man
into a waiting car and drive off
refuse the bait. They talk quietly
gathered beneath the streetlamp
in the pale circle of light
the man was beaten in, and then
a word we cannot hear is given
and the cops wave each other back
to their vehicles, the sparkle and flash
of their driving off
throwing onto the wall of our room
a shadow of the embrace
my wife and I have been clinging to.
Thank God for those who willing to answer the questions that I too am often willing not to ask.
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