Sometimes making things and writing these posts comes naturally. I collect seeds in the garden and photograph them in the right pot and the appropriate poem is already in my memory. Other days it’s like having to skewer intentions and slow roast them on the heat from my walks around the pond. I draw on our history of kiln firings which requires not only hard work but the shoveling of laughter and ribbing as well as encouragement from friends and family. When the pots and pages, clay and camera come together at the right angle, I feel like dancing in the privacy of the studio. But in the end standing on the porch watching the last light drain from the sky while noticing the new moon is the reminder to keep going.
Making Things
Suddenly I had to skewer all my prayers
and slow-roast them in
the open-air kitchen of my imagination.
I had to shovel fire into my laughter
and keep my eyes from blinking. I had to fuss
like a cook simmering storms.
I had to move like a ballet dancer but without the vanity
and self-consciousness of tradition.
I had to blur my scars so I could write into time,
and carry the sensation of walking like a morose
and heavy American sporting a yellow ascot
over Pont Saint-Michel. I want to be
all razzle-dazzle before the dark-cloaked one
arrives for a last game of chess.
My font of feelings is a waterfall and I live
as if no toupees exist on earth or masks that silence
the oppressed or anything that does not applaud
the sycamores’ tribute to the red flame like the heat
beneath my grandmother’s heart who never raised a ghost
but a storm. So, look at me standing on the porch laughing
at the creek threatening to become a raging river.
–Major Jackson, in Razzle Dazzle: New and Selected Poems, © 2023 by Major Jackson