TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown. 

When I meet someone new, or my Lyft driver strikes up a conversation, or a new nurse practitioner asks, “What do you do?” it can be a little dicey telling people I’m a poet or a writer. When I say I’m a poet, people always look surprised. One time a dental hygienist said, “Poet? Do people still do that?” As if poetry was something people wrote only in Shakespeare’s time. Sometimes people ask, “What kind of poems do you write?” Or, “What are your poems about?”

These seem like pretty basic questions, but I’ve always found them difficult to answer. What kind of poems do I write? Um, free verse? Poems for adults? Poems that mostly don’t rhyme? And the other question is just as loaded, because I’m not thinking about what my poems are “about” when I’m writing them. I’m not planning a “theme.” 

I think “aboutness,” for a poet, can be a trap. I think you can ruin a poem by going into it determined to write about something in particular. Ideally, you pay attention and listen, and you let the language lead you, not some idea of “theme.” The poem reveals itself over time. 

I was drawn to today’s poem from the get-go because of its title: ”Poem about everything except—.” I went in anticipating maximalism — “everything but the kitchen sink,” as the saying goes, and the poem delivered. But it also surprised me, again and again, and I think it will surprise you, too. Maybe, deep down, all poems are ABOUT just that: surprise. A feeling of discovery.

Poem about everything except—
by Amy Lemmon

             “To write these days is to avoid telling people how 
angry I am.”             
             —Daniel Nester   


Behold the Rottweiler in its cage, behold homemade cornhusk 
ornaments, behold the photo of a Jaymar miniature piano,  

behold the galaxy of knees at noon, facing the maestro’s 
fragrance. Behold, behold, I stand at the door and knock-
knock-knock

Answer the call, be real now, be here & calculate 
cost vs. bennies, don’t be that person who waits  

until the last chorus to join in. Makes you look careless. 
Care less. Rejection is a state, like catalepsy, to move through.  

Behold the scroll, the wretched bankroll, the double tongue 
summoning his minions to court, calculate the chorus  

and ford the spring, a small thing, mysterious as amaryllis— 
a little water, a little sun. Behold my process of (pre)tending.  

Sweetpea, the voice will always call, a murmur or hum, 
a spring burbling or a dammed-up flood. Locally sourced,  

unforced, double-spaced & tortured into shape. Copyright 
the Year of Our Lord blank blankety-blank, Amen.  

Behold the ample galaxy, a naked miracle through the blinds. 
Clean your damn windows and the bulb will bloom.

"Poem about everything except--" by Amy Lemmon. Originally published in SWWIM Every Day. Used by permission of the poet.