Transcript

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

In my early twenties, I rocked a gaucho look: sombrero cordobés and duster like Zorro. Then I had this black leather and jeans thing going on. Then, I got a job in the corporate office of Urban Outfitters; so I eased into sporting oxford shirts underneath blue blazers. They say clothes make the man. Frequently though, clothes hide the person, particularly a person’s depth of feeling. Today’s poem explores what states of being we transmit, or do not transmit, when we step out of our house.

Nature Poem About Flowers
by Matthew Rohrer

Looking back at photographs
our clothes were enormous draped
across our shoulders hanging
low off our hips like they were
someone else’s and they were
usually someone’s old flannel
it is clear we didn’t care
or that we had different goals
for our clothes I remember
one night at the National
Arts Club B. seemed truly shocked
he said I always pegged you
as kind of a bohemian
but look at you in that suit
it wasn’t unexpected
I drifted through the reading
nursing some very old wounds
acting like I was paying
attention there was somewhere
else I was dreaming about
the dappled and shifting light
of a forest in a book
where the air was cool and smelled
like imaginary flowers
and then we were applauding
and outside on the sidewalk
the city trembled and glowed
and we all felt it beckon
when F. pulled a purple chunk
of opium from his vest
at the bottom of tall streets
at Union Square a flowery
veil descended this was when
the city would wink at us
like it liked us or I thought
approved of us and when
we went to the movies
the actors were dressed like us
and one night it was the night
before I quit a lousy job
I had to get up and walk
it off and when I looked down
at my clothes under a streetlight
I saw they were all brown
everything I was wearing
and I heard the phrase glad rags
said by someone else
inside my head but also
I remembered the grown-ups
used to talk under their breath
about one of the older
kids how there was something wrong
with him it was obvious
because he only wore brown
and the elders nodded yes
the elders nodded wisely
and I guess I didn’t care
because all in brown I stepped
out onto the avenue
—where spring sounded its high notes
and the blue air was perfumed
by all the flowering trees
that people who don’t live here
don’t believe in, the dogwoods
the redbuds, magnolias
—and I sneezed
and the avenue was lit up
like the deck of a ship
in the morning I would quit
my demeaning job but first
where the electricity
flowed unimpeded I too
wished to flow in my glad rags
through the streets of flowering
night and when I returned home
all the rooms were dark and S.
seemed asleep I quietly
slipped out of my enormous
shapeless clothes and opened
an ancient book trying once
again but without success
to live inside it never
coming out except at night
to finally persuade S.
that we could survive that way
that we could live forever
inside of books and she said
she could agree to part-time
and I said fine and we both
returned to the dreamy dark
that surrounds us but that
we don’t share with anyone
and I dreamed I quit my job
by waving a sunflower
at my boss who had no power
over the natural world
and when I woke up I thought
that’s not a dream that’s just true

“Nature Poem About Flowers” by Matthew Rohrer from ARMY OF GIANTS © 2024 Matthew Rohrer. Used by permission of the poet and Wave Books.