Doug Roy, Cactus Moon, Cut Paper
First time I saw him
With a warm heart and tired eyes I said to her, I don’t want to wake up until the bears do, in the Spring. And then do it slow, drunk-like lumbering heavy at dusk, parts of me still asleep. Dobru notz.
* * *
An elk bugles from somewhere behind me. An older man walks toward me from the shore. A serious man with plenty of fuck off. But he means no harm. I can see his simple wooden boat is made from the planks of my grandfather’s barn. He says to me, Blood only means what you let it. Then tells me plain and matter of fact he’s packed everything I no longer need to carry through this life. It’s on the boat. All the shit you don’t need that burdens others, he says. I know where to take it. Just give me the word. I stood there looking at his enormous hands—his left hand a Sycamore, the right a Slavic Oak.
* * *
Drinking coffee in bed, I tell her becoming a chaplain in the prison and getting ordained will mean shedding my antlers. Of course, she says. I just don’t need to be trusted, I tell her, the way others do. Or liked. What I need is to do the work.
________________
Craig Goodworth
Review by Massimiliano Nastri
How should one define this work: poem, poetic prose?
I would call it a sketch, an impression but not exactly personal, a one-take but not an instant photo; it can grow, build up, but compressed. The tone is perfect, at least to a foreign ear: as plain as post-epic or agnostic Bible: you have the story, and the inner voice does not interfere with it. It is stated, does not overcome. Raymond Carver pulls out the roof of Nick Adams’ house, hears, sees and writes.
Review by Zeke Sanchez
Very powerful, a definite personality behind the poem. The depiction of the man is vital and strong. This poet has a gift for tying disparate scenes, images, together. Who are those poets that preceded us who tied things together like this, I forget. The man talking to his wife about a long sleep, a long rest, the image of the older man and the boat and his hands, and the enigmatic statement about loading the writer’s unwanted, unnecessary shit onto a boat, and then explaining to his wife the conditions he pulls from himself for the work he will be doing. It’s not easy to pull these paragraphs together, but it is rewarding.
Review by Jared Pearce
I find the scramble of ideas, attitudes, truths, and lies bound at the conclusion quite engaging.
Review by Dave Mehler
Craig is not a normal person, not in any real sense in any real way. For one thing, as a man, he’s huge, not only physically but also larger than life personally–he could have had any of three careers and distinguished himself (sports, military, artistic) but for a variety of reasons turned his back on all of them, except for possibly the last in which he practices with almost no audience, doing domo work for the moment. Now he works in an official capacity as a prison and VA chaplain. He doesn’t like what he calls poemy poems. What he means by this is the use of any device in poetry as possibly straightforward as line breaks? Really any poetic devices smacking of affectation, artificiality, academia. Those are thrown out the window. Part of how he gets away with eschewing normal poetic practice is this sense of being such an oddball, a round peg in a square hole, with three graduate degrees. His view on the world, faith, American culture is so skewed that it seems he can’t help but come up with startling, interesting writing, whether it brushes up against poetic device on his terms or simply lies there as prose referencing his idiosyncratic vision and personal life. Partly to blame for this, I suspect, is his Slovakian heritage, which informs the background of his particular quirky take on things. I think this is a poem about having a very personal theophany in a dream vision. I also find it good and strange, and believe he succeeds in getting away with calling it a poem.
Review by Ben Sloan
This is an amazing dreamscape I come back to over and over again. Bookended by a speaker in bed, refusing in the opening to to not “wake up until the bears do”–and in the end resolving to “do the work” (presumably, maybe, having to do with becoming “a chaplain in the prison” as mentioned in the earlier part of this closing”) is an encounter with “an older man.” A key line seems to be “Blood only means what you let it,” suggesting the speaker can let go of “the shit you don’t need” you possess as the result of growing up in the context of a particular family, in a particular culture. The mention of a “Slavic oak” and the phrase “Dobru notz” suggest wherefrom the speaker originates.
The remarks from the “fuck off” older gentleman who offers to load into a boat made from grandfather’s barn everything we don’t need and get rid of it for us suggests we can empty ourselves, if we choose, of the internal burdens holding us back. Doing so will allow us to take control and get to work doing what needs to be done.
I love the raw, remote texture of this piece anchored in the speaker’s unique background and experience. It has a take-control-of-ourselves character, despite seeming but overcomable difficulties, that is hopeful.