The brown MFA poetry department put me in the trunk of a car and wouldn't let me out
Two nights ago, I went to a poetry reading. I have gone to a poetry reading every night since I’ve moved to Providence. Most of them are similar. There is nothing else to do in Providence. Most poetry readings include one poet who only reads ‘your mom’ poems. ‘Your mom’ poems are funny the first time you hear one, but then they kind of get old. The first time I heard a ‘your mom’ poem I laughed. The poet said, “My bed sheets were dirty. Your mom changed them.” OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOhhhh. LOL. Burn.
If you like poetry readings you should move to Providence. If you don’t have a car or your leg is stuck in a bear trap in Wyoming, you should write a poem called, “I don’t have a car or my leg is stuck in a bear trap in Wyoming,” and eventually someone in Providence will read it and they’ll come and get you. Most likely they’ll send out a team of poets to read to the bear trap and the bear trap will relinquish its grasp and then you’ll be able to move to Providence.
After the reading I wanted to eat a hamburger. One of the poets said, “I know a good hamburger place that sells hamburgers for $3.” I said, “I am interested.” Time passed. A significant amount of time passed. After all that time passed a poet came up to me and said, “The $3 hamburgers don’t exist anymore. I am going around the corner to buy a grilled cheese.” I went with them and bought candy coated almonds.
Then it was midnight and I thought, “I should go home and study Spanish.” I had a big Spanish test the following morning. I hadn’t studied yet. I said, “I think I’m going to go home and study Spanish.” Everyone looked at me like I was stupid. One person began yelling. They yelled, “Follow me.” Everyone followed. I followed. When the yelling stopped we were at someone’s car. Everyone got in the car. There were not enough seats for everyone. One of the poets pointed at me and said, “You, in the trunk.” I got in the trunk. Before the poet shut the trunk they said, “Write a poem about the trunk.” It was dark in the trunk. I could not see. I tried to write a poem. I thought, “I will write a poem to a bear trap that will make it relinquish its grasp.” The poem was not very good. We went over a bump. I said, “Ow,” even though the bump did not hurt. If I was a bear trapper I would put up signs near the trap that said, “Caution, there is a bear trap in the vicinity.” I’m pretty sure bears can’t read. When the car stopped I was let out of the trunk. Everyone wanted to know what it was like in the trunk. I made attempts at describing the situation. Then Shel Silverstein did acid. Then I went home.
Here is my bear trap poem:
“Your mom is a bear trap. Then she changed my sheets. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOhhh. LOL. Burn.”
Bear trap, different kind
You should know this Galway Kinnell poem, if you don't already. It's about bear traps and poems.
The Bear
1
In late winter
I sometimes glimpse bits of steam
coming up from
some fault in the old snow
and bend close and see it is lung-colored
and put down my nose
and know
the chilly, enduring odor of bear.
2
I take a wolf's rib and whittle
it sharp at both ends
and coil it up
and freeze it in blubber and place it out
on the fairway of the bears.
And when it has vanished
I move out on the bear tracks,
roaming in circles
until I come to the first, tentative, dark
splash on the earth.
And I set out
running, following the splashes
of blood wandering over the world.
At the cut, gashed resting places
I stop and rest,
at the crawl-marks
where he lay out on his belly
to overpass some stretch of bauchy ice
I lie out
dragging myself forward with bear-knives in my fists.
3
On the third day I begin to starve,
at nightfall I bend down as I knew I would
at a turd sopped in blood,
and hesitate, and pick it up,
and thrust it in my mouth, and gnash it down,
and rise
and go on running.
4
On the seventh day,
living by now on bear blood alone,
I can see his upturned carcass far out ahead, a scraggled,
steamy hulk,
the heavy fur riffling in the wind.
I come up to him
and stare at the narrow-spaced, petty eyes,
the dismayed
face laid back on the shoulder, the nostrils
flared, catching
perhaps the first taint of me as he
died.
I hack
a ravine in his thigh, and eat and drink,
and tear him down his whole length
and open him and climb in
and close him up after me, against the wind,
and sleep.
5
And dream
of lumbering flatfooted
over the tundra,
stabbed twice from within,
splattering a trail behind me,
splattering it out no matter which way I lurch,
no matter which parabola of bear-transcendence,
which dance of solitude I attempt,
which gravity-clutched leap,
which trudge, which groan.
6
Until one day I totter and fall --
fall on this
stomach that has tried so hard to keep up,
to digest the blood as it leaked in,
to break up
and digest the bone itself: and now the breeze
blows over me, blows off
the hideous belches of ill-digested bear blood
and rotted stomach
and the ordinary, wretched odor of bear,
blows across
my sore, lolled tongue a song
or screech, until I think I must rise up
and dance. And I lie still.
7
poetry, by which I lived?
I awaken I think. Marshlights
reappear, geese
come trailing again up the flyway.
In her ravine under old snow the dam-bear
lies, licking
lumps of smeared fur
and drizzly eyes into shapes
with her tongue. And one
hairy-soled trudge stuck out before me,
the next groaned out,
the next,
the next,
the rest of my days I spend
wandering: wondering
what, anyway,
was that sticky infusion, that rank flavor of blood, that
from Body Rags, Galway Kinnell (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967).
http://staff.psc.edu/schneide/Kinnell-TheBear.html