Episode 114: The Swirl
b'We are enswirled in this episode, Slushies, enswirled! We discuss three poems by John Sibley Willliams, two of which are ghazals. Williams\\u2019 poems are the gravitational force around which our conversation about craft, form, fluidity, identity, and the flux and spaciousness found inside poetry spirals. Williams\\u2019 poems draw the swirl of our attention not only to the choices he makes on the page but to Agha Shahad Ali\\u2019s rules for real ghazals, Williams\\u2019 poetic conversation with Tarfia Faizullah, and his nod to Kavek Akbar\\u2019s \\u201cGloves\\u201d. There is a pun these show notes want to make about guzzling ghazals, Slushies, but we are trying hard to resist it\\u2026\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\nAt the table: Marion Wrenn, Jason Schneiderman, Kathleen Volk Miller, Dagne Forrest, Samantha Neugebauer\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\nThis episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors, Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist\\xa0 A.M.Mills, whose song \\u201cSpaghetti with Loretta\\u201d now opens our show.\\xa0\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\n\\n\\xa0\\nJohn Sibley Williams is the author of nine poetry collections, most recently Scale Model of a Country at Dawn (Cider Press Review Poetry Award) and The Drowning House (Elixir Press Poetry Award). He serves as editor of The Inflectionist Review, Poetry Editor at Kelson Books, and founder of the Caesura Poetry Workshop series. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his partner, twin biracial six-year-olds (one of whom is beautifully transgender), a boisterous Boston Terrier, and a basement full of horror movie memorabilia.\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\nAuthor website, Facebook @ john.sibleywilliams\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\nGhazal for Transparency / for Reflection\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\xa0\\nMy ghosts breathe accusingly\\u2014a winter mass, a mirror\\u2019s impermanent\\xa0\\nerasure\\u2014again shaving I\\u2019m sorry from the face over my face in the glass.\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\xa0\\nIt\\u2019s not just the birds\\u2014their abridged flight, the stains the sky wears today\\xa0\\nthrough this washable window\\u2014but my children\\u2019s tiny hands absolving the glass.\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\xa0\\nOf guilt? Of shame? Is it his blood raging generations through my veins or this white-\\xa0\\nwashed silence compelling me to pull our history, face-by-face, from its frames of glass?\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\xa0\\nAll this uneaten grain filling silo after silo\\u2014always at dusk, in my mind\\u2014swarmed now\\xa0\\nwith mealworms & mites & someone else\\u2019s hunger. How it cuts the tongue like shards of glass.\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\xa0\\n& those goddamned honeycombs, failing again. How our neighbor\\u2019s unable to keep his bees\\n close enough to cultivate. Our house too is a small box of dust & wing & against the glass\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\xa0\\nseparating us from the world curtains blur our reflections like rain. Like stars cutting through\\n cloud, a sustainable song. May my girls never be dead enough to fear themselves in our glass.\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\nGhazal Beginning & Ending with Lines from Tarfia Faizullah\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\xa0\\nLet me break free from these lace-frail microscopic bodies.\\xa0\\nMy breath (always shared); trace it back to unmasked foreign bodies.\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\xa0\\nTaking that last winter deep into her lungs. Breathe, I remind her.\\xa0\\n& remember me a child, Mom, not this unrecognizable foreign body.\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\xa0\\nThe sky\\u2019s aperture widens. Sight \\u2260 witness. The organ\\u2019s rusty song catches\\xa0\\nin the rafters (unascended). & all this rain leaking down on us like foreign bodies.\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\xa0\\nGrey fox. White cells. Families fleeing one home for (hopes of) another.\\xa0\\nSome borders, perhaps, are meant to be trespassed by unforeign bodies.\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\nRow after perfect row = harvest. Harvest \\u2260 everyone is fed. Sated. Breaking\\xa0\\nup from the earth beneath, star thistle & bindweed. To us, foreign bodies.\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\xa0\\nThe day an autumn orphan, & we\\u2019re yanking roots. My daughter\\u2019s tiny\\xa0\\nmisgendered fingers in mine, (pulling. Together), no body is foreign.\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\xa0\\nField of Anchors\\xa0\\n\\xa0 \\xa0 \\xa0 \\xa0 \\xa0 \\xa0 \\xa0 \\xa0 \\xa0 \\xa0 \\u2014\\xa0\\xa0 for Kaveh Akbar\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\xa0\\nDarkness on both sides.\\xa0\\n& wild grasses. Sun-hurt.\\xa0\\nBrowning. So as not to drift.\\xa0\\nToo far from shore. A man.\\xa0\\nPalms the tiny church inside.\\xa0\\nThe warm casing. Inside a god.\\xa0\\nPrays to another god. For more.\\xa0\\nOf himself. More devotion.\\xa0\\nOne more detonation. Of roses.\\xa0\\nLess blood next time. Less field.\\xa0\\nWithout end. Or is it more.\\xa0\\nThat\\u2019s required to ma'