Episode 09: All Abu Dhabi, All the Time

All 3 of the poems on today’s episode were submitted by poet Brittney Scott.* The Abu Dhabi editors flagged Scott’s previous submissions—we wanted to publish them!—but we moved too slowly. Other publications nabbed them. So Scott sent us another batch of poems to consider and we discussed them on this special edition of “The Slush Pile,” the “all Abu Dhabi all the time edition,” featuring members of our Abu Dhabi editorial board.

 

All 3 of the poems on today’s episode were submitted by poet Brittney Scott.* The Abu Dhabi editors flagged Scott’s previous submissions—we wanted to publish them!—but we moved too slowly. Other publications nabbed them. So Scott sent us another batch of poems to consider and we discussed them on this special edition of “The Slush Pile,” the “all Abu Dhabi all the time edition,” featuring members of our Abu Dhabi editorial board.

These poems set out to both delight and appall. We were transfixed by a dismembered body mauled by dogs in “After the Hunt”; fascinated by the relationship between a daughter and her mother, an “unstable gardener,” in “Daughter of Wild Lettuce.”

Plus, Scott’s work stuck an inadvertent chord with our PBQ ex-pat crew. Listen as Scott’s poems help the Abu Dhabi editors make sense of being far flung, of being mildly Dazed & Confused.

Brittney Scott received an MFA from Hollins University in Virginia. A finalist in the 2013 Narrative 30 Below Contest, she is also the 2012 recipient of the Joy Harjo Prize for Poetry and the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize. She teaches creative writing to adults, Girl Scouts, and high-risk youth at Richmond’s Visual Arts Center.

Tell us what you think about Brittney Scott’s poems or anything else you’d like to share with us on our Facebook page event, Episode 9.

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Read on!

--MW

* You might notice that we posted only 2 of the 3 poems we discussed in this week’s episode in our show notes. This is the first time in 9 episodes we’ve had a poet ask us not to post anything we reject. You’ll have to listen to hear more!

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Present at the Editorial Table:

Marion Wrenn

Anna Pedersen

Ben Hackenberger

Samantha Neugebauer

 

Production Engineer:

Richard Lennon

 

PBQ Box Score: 2=3

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After the Hunt

Here’s the body the dogs robbed—

the limbs strewn around the field like prophecy.

She won’t make it,

they say. They say

the body found in her bed

was eaten right through to the floral mattress.

They had to shut her eyes

because she would not stop

blinking up at a bone marrow colored sky,

enjoying her party, the confetti

of her flayed body.

The dogs got sick on her form,

the remains of her last meal of steamed artichoke

grapes, mercy, and rejection.

Don’t they know

What’s good for one

will poison another? So

they say. They say

the dogs died in a circle

and she rose the next day

to bury them and bring flowers

to their graves.

 

 

Daughter of Wild Lettuce

My mother plants snow peas behind the garage.

She works around the sink hole that takes

dry leaves and garbage all summer.

 

In her memory, I am an almost abortion.

She plants marigolds with the tomatoes,

symbiotic bright suns

 

bursting between the rows.

Sometimes she knows, love

abounding, sometimes she overlooks

 

an entire season’s glut, and rot

carries us through winter.

In the cellar, plastic roses, night crawlers,

 

unfinished half-hearted projects,

the potatoes’ all seeing eyes and me

damp through my nightshirt.

 

No natural light filters in,

so I only know the earth’s eternal hour.

 

My mother, an unstable gardener,

tosses spare seeds into barren patches

of the backyard. We won’t know until spring.

 

Sometimes new buds shoot up

in the most unusual places,

but more often, they don’t.