Episode 126: Narrative Possibility

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

that was fourteen years ago,

but in that moment, I loved him.

We toast with a click of our shells—

he lifts one to his lips.