Transcript

I’m Major Jackson, and this is The Slowdown.

In my household, some weekends are for antique shopping, thrifting, estate sales. We love the treasure hunt. I look for vintage radios; Didi looks for works of art and garden pots. We love contributing to a culture of recycling. The sweet drifting into other time periods also appeals to us: art deco clocks, mid-century desks, craftsman style chairs, 1960s Pop Art lamps.

We also do our best to pass along our clutter to our local thrift store. Once, however, I accidentally loaded a bag of freshly folded, dry cleaned shirts into a donation cart. They were mixed in with old books, long-held VHS movies and a few dusty lamps. When I hurried back to retrieve them, they had already disappeared into the piled goods and boxes of the donation center.

For a year it was jolting to stumble upon my shirts on the racks. Initially, I did not realize they were previously owned by me and would marvel at someone’s good taste. But many times, I felt like Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day, that “I’ve-been-here-before” feeling. Looking at the polos, tees, and knitted shirts teased out whatever impulses of fashion that first drew me. But more, the experience challenged the Greek philosopher’s famous adage, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.”

Writing poems can be a lot like shopping in a thrift store where all the forgotten items are yours, and the act of finding language is a form of discovery and recovery. Today’s poem reminds me how emotionally difficult it is to retrieve the past, even for the purpose of art.

Selfsame River Thrice
by Alicia Mountain

Bought the kind of discount flight
where you don’t even bring a carry-on,
thinking you’ll arrive to everything
you left behind. How the lady at
Bargain Corner said that at least
once a week someone comes in
to buy back what they’ve given away.
Sometimes it’s there and sometimes it isn’t.
And sometimes they don’t want to pay.

Walked past the old house and couldn’t
lift my eyes to it. Flicked what glowing 
butt of home I had held as an ember
and ground it into the grass I used to mow.

Down by the water got carried away
thinking of the spring that a man,
eating a driver’s seat burrito in the 
Taco John’s parking lot, left his life
and his truck in reverse. The whole diesel
carapace rolled backwards into the river
so high it drowned and tumbled them 
down to the minor league field.
The season hadn’t started yet,
the sand was still uncombed.

Stepped over and over into the pool
of guts I spilled before women as offering.
Poking around in the offal of myself:
Here, my paternal discontent. Here,
my queer tupperware childhood. Here, 
the meteor shower that spangles my 
birthnight, and how I like to be alone
from the light pollution when it falls.
Gathering this up, soupy in my arms—
it’s for you, this is all for you. It was.
It still is, slipping heavy out of grasp.
A wet trout in a wet hand before
it’s knocked pocketknife dead.

"Selfsame River Thrice" by Alicia Mountain. Used by permission of the poet.