In any list of great living American poets, native Californians are well represented: Kay Ryan (America’s poet laureate) and Sharon Olds have appeared on the TSP more than a few times. One of the rising stars of American poetry is surely San Diego’s Jennifer Moxley, whose recent verse displays a dazzling command of different forms as well as a passionate fusing of the personal and the political.
Moxley’s not a sentimentalist by any means. This is one of her gentler pieces, but it has its own bite.
Epithalamium
This union shall not be a contract,
the joining on whim in a frightened time,
entered solely for the benefit of those
who would wish their mistakes visited
upon the bright and the young.
This union shall not take place
beneath a passive veil of fear.
This union is a reunion — the crown
on a longed-for joining –
the final touch on the temporal cage,
the material completion
so many times dreamed of
in the cold sheets of critical youth.
In ancient times, Aristophanes described
three types of mythic beings
joined together at the back (two men,
two women, a man and a woman).
They wobbled through the primordial world
happy and whole, devoid of culture,
until they were violently split asunder
by what could only have been
an arbitrary and lonely God. The halves
thenceforward drifted through history,
riven by emptiness, passing for whole.
Yet you, in defiance of this tragic
history, have found each other anew.
Now you may dwell in the vision
of the face you felt you lost forever.
Stand before each other, self, but other,
separate yet one, a missing measure found,
a mirror in which no flaws reflect:
join and quell this exhausted drifting,
join that your kiss might align the stars
and stop the planets from their wandering.
Some of us do appreciate the poems you stick in here. So keep ‘em coming, if it doesn’t mess up your other duties. Oh. On “Womanist Musings” there is a fairly fresh post about kids’ right to sovereignty over their bodies, “boundaries” and so on. A must-read. I hope Heloise will grow up knowing that her body is her own and not for anyone else to hug, tweak, etc. w/o permission, even in fun. I’d be a healthier person today if lots of people had kept their hands off me.
Oh, and happy Pride Weekend, if this is when it happens in your town. If I’m late, ‘scuse me.
Ohmigod.
I srsly need to read the poems you post more often.
This one made me teary-eyed.