Episode 126: Narrative Possibility Painted Bride Quarterly’s Slush Pile

We kick off this episode with some riffing on Hallmark movies and a suspension of Jason’s voting rights. No worries, though! The two poems under discussion are by a former student of Jason’s and it comes clear pretty quickly that we’re all fans. Don’t listen to this episode for the suspense, but for the delicious delve into narrative possibility and how poetry is wonderfully suited to keeping the door open long after a poem ends. Indented lineation and how it can affect a poem’s pacing gets some attention, as does the sensory tease of wonderfully selected symbolism and imagery. We also touch on the implication of the reader in a poem where the speaker is still working things out. In this film-tinged discussion, Kathy reminds us that a sweet ending can hit the spot, Sam confesses to thinking a lot about “Baby Boom”, Dagne owns up to seeing Raiders of the Lost Art eleven times when it was first released, Jason pays homage to Diane Keaton and Liza Minelli, and Isabel poses a question that underscores our theme of narrative possibility.
 
Some links we think you’ll like:
Whisky & Rum in Raiders of the Lost Ark, ThirstMag.com
How Baby Boom Set the Template for Future Movies About Working Mothers, Vulture
 
At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Jason Schneiderman, Samantha Neugebauer, Isabel Petry, Dagne Forrest
 

 
Georgia M. Brodsky is a recent graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She lives south of Boston, near the ocean, with her partner and their daughter.
 
The Tavern
 
After I cracked the 6-ball off the table,
he offered to teach me
to drive stick in the parking lot.
 
Before: whiskey
in no-one’s-joking-sized
shot glasses, the kind
 
the cool girl in Indiana Jones throws back
then stacks like a champ
while men fall off their stools
 
around her. Heavy glasses.
No windows. Just the door
to the lot, to the harbor
 
eventually, where earlier that day
I’d seen a girl my age
with a pocketknife, cleaning a fish.
 
She’d plucked the eyes out,
let them sit
on the ground staring up
 
like a figment in Charlie Kaufman’s
dreams. Every story is a version
of something else.
 
I followed him to his car. I didn’t.
I laughed and touched his arm. I balled
my hands into fists. My body
 
felt something was wrong. I felt
nothing. It always turns out alright
in the end. It never does.
 
I’m the girl who climbed
into the truck and the one
who got home safe. I taught myself
 
how to drive stick and how to run
the table. I’m the girl in the harbor.
All eyes.
 
At the Raw Bar, Housing Three Dozen Oysters for our Eighth Anniversary
 
We’re not in it for the sex,
if that’s what you’re thinking.
And besides, I’m not the kind
of person who shucks and tells.
That was a joke. But it’s exactly
what I’m talking about.
I’m the kind who makes jokes
when something matters too much.
 
We’re not in it for the sex.
It’s more about what happens
after the shell unlatches:
brine, salt, alive, pulling us in
by the shirt, shaking us
and putting us down as if
tentacles had launched out
from under the ice.
 
That wasn’t a metaphor
for our relationship. I’m honest
to God talking about oysters:
the knock-back, the vinegar zip,
extra lemon on the side.
A feeling like our bodies could turn
back into fish. A speedboat
revving from zero to sixty, that’s how
it felt to throw down my first
Mookie Blue after nine
pregnant months. Forget forks
or sauce or napkins. If every drop
of oyster liquor doesn’t make it
to your mouth, you shouldn’t
even be here, and by here,
I mean sitting across the bar,
gaping at us, saying, wow,
that’s a lot of oysters,
or standing on the shores
of an oyster farm, complaining
that the wind’s too cold.
 
Am I getting any closer
to explaining myself?
When we first met, he traced
his finger along the coves
of Maine’s coast, a chart
of waterways and kayak routes,
I swear, the only freshman
with a map of water pinned
to his dorm room wall, and
t