And believed he was ordained to rule?
Poetry of the People with Al Black featuring Kelley Lannigan
Where is the map when we get lost inside ourselves? — Kelley Lannigan
I chose poet, Kelley Lannigan, as this week's Poet of the People because of the wonderful narrative flow of her poetry.
Kelley Lannigan grew up in rural Richland County and studied art and journalism at Columbia College. She spent her life curating art (most recently the Georgia O'Keefe Anniversary Exhibition at Columbia College) and as an editor and journalist for magazines and newspapers. She is retired and lives in Winnsboro with her cats writing poetry, painting, and taking on an occasional writing project.
Aubade
The sun raises the red coin of its face.
Morning, in her gown of light
dances among the trees.
A Cooper’s Hawk, the one we hear
but rarely see, screams reveille.
Awake! Awake! Awake!
It rained so hard last night.
Nipper Creek, dry for months,
runs like a marathon.
Trucks haul gravel from the quarry. Gears shift,
grind, strain up the road’s steep slope.
Sometimes a SLAM! A BANG!
Soon, blasting will shake the ground.
Trucks pass, their angry music fades.
Silence deepens like a dream.
Tops of pines, slow green brooms, sweep the sky.
Old cat snoozes on the rough steps.
She chases something in her sleep.
She woke me earlier, pawed my chest in the dark,
reminded me that for now,
I am not alone.
Terra Incognita
(In memory of Steve, lost to dementia)
He was the kind of man we were glad to see.
The kind who leaned over the fence to talk about his goats,
his chickens. A farmer, adding his link to the long chain
of Huguenots who husbanded the land. Their sturdy houses
still stand sentinel over the Santee, the Pee Dee, the French Broad.
A family man. Husband, lover, father, teacher.
A worldly man. Soldier, navigator, pilot.
A hunter who knew what passed by its scat,
a mark on a tree, tracks in the snow.
The kind of man we called at 3 a.m.
about strange noise by the barns.
His bobbing lantern across the dark fields
made us feel safe.
Snow melts. Tracks erode. Terrain shifts.
Where is the map when we get lost inside ourselves?
He was a man who disappeared before our eyes.
Forgot our faces, his children’s names.
Left the water running. Could not remember
his phone number. How to use the phone.
What a phone was for. Forgot to eat.
Lay in bed until told to get up.
Replied “yes” to every question.
Missed the turn to his farm, piloted his old Chevy
into the next county. Then across the next.
Or simply sat for hours behind the wheel going nowhere.
Kelley Lannigan will be our poetry feature this Wednesday, 08/16 - 7 pm for Mind Gravy Poetry at Cool Beans, 1217 College Street, Columbia
Poetry of the People with Al Black featuring Jeff Bryson
Given his years of service to the poets of SC and beyond, Jasper asked board of directors member Al Black to curate a weekly addition to Jasper Online featuring some of his favorite local poetry. A Poet of the People himself, Al produces gatherings of writers and musicians both in Columbia and throughout the Southeast. He is the author of two collections of works, I Only Left For Tea, and Man With Two Shadows.
I have chosen W. Jefferson Bryson as our first Poet of the People, because of the unvarnished immediacy of his truths; no bells and whistles or other affectations; just his truths in his words.
I know Jeff as poet and sometimes musician who grew up in the upstate and spent most of his adult life in the midlands as a social worker and then twelve years as the State Ombudsman and still was able to retain his integrity and humanity.
PTSP: Post Traumatic Stress Poetry 1970
How it Was
Until it Wasn’t
Two years down
How quickly it happens
On a Wednesday
Walking a path
Crickets and comrades
Then little dark men
In black pajamas
With old AKs
As big as they are
Leap out ahead of us
And scream and fire
And their aim
So poor, so terrified
Of hulking, red-eyed
American Devils
Their shots tear apart
The jungle around us
We aim together
And render them
Red mist, mostly
Painting the foliage
And the ground
All around.
And suddenly
Wednesday, again
Tour over, discharge
A duffle-bag
Jeans and a work shirt
Commercial flight
DC-9 to San Diego
Teach Your Children
On the radio
And all I know
Is friendly
Or foe
And me, now
Without a weapon.
Flashback, With Soundtrack
Listening to Creedence
Reminds me of the jungle
The sound of M-16 fire
Of helicopters, of brown water
Of 50 cals, of F-4 Phantoms
The smell of rice paddies
Hot in the afternoon
Or drowning in rain
The smell of Napalm
The smells of Saigon
Viet Nam.
My Brothers
My God
Where are they
What has happened
To us all.
Zero-Dark-Thirty, One More Time
Three-thirty in the dark. Again.
And I’m awake. Again.
And I remember. Again.
All gave some. Some gave all.
And the elephant grass
Grows tall and thick
Through my memory
And I forget
Until I dream.
And the sound of M-16 fire
Suddenly returns in the deep night
And the thump of 50 cals
I feel them in my ribs
My own heartbeat
Even now, quickens
And I remember
The smell of Napalm
And screaming death
And I will sleep no more
Tonight.
Steppenwolf
You hear
Magic Carpet Ride
I see fire
Blossoming, rising
Red and black
Mushroom clouds
Of Napalm
In forever-green
Jungle.
Hueys
Cobra gunships
F-4 Phantoms.
Burning villages
Cluster bombs.
It won’t hurt you
It only kills plants.
Mekong catfish,
Twelve feet long.
China Beach.
Saigon.
Vietnam.
Some of us
Never went.
Some of us
Never left.
Something As Simple As a Song
Creedence
Steppenwolf
Blood, Sweat and Tears
Da Nang
Dok To
Long Binh
My Lai
Khe Sanh
Hue
Suddenly
How can it have come to this?
To be a sick, sad old man
Alone in a small apartment
In a raging city of angry strangers
All my comrades
Lost or gone
Ghosts of memory
Living or dead
And the greatest tragedy of all
Not a trace of senility
Or forgetfulness
Or rest
Or peace
In me.
W. Jefferson Bryson is a retired Social Worker. He has spent a lot of time with Vietnam vets and heard a lot of stories. Sometimes they come back in bits and snatches in poems like these.
A Poem by Randy Spencer
In this summer of Oppenheimer (and Barbie) mania, Chapin poet Randy Spencer was reminded of this poem, which he read in 2002 at a gathering for Richard Rhodes when he came to USC for a discussion of his "The Making of the Atomic Bomb." Jasper is pleased to share this with you 21 years later.
Georgia O'Keeffe Discusses Her Poem
[1945] My Ghost Ranch in New Mexico is due North
of Los Alamos. I have painted two canvases of the sky
pouring through the pelvic bones of cows, the first where
that light is deep blue, and the second where the sky turns
yellow and blood seems to pore from the circle of bone.
Pelvis III, 1944, Oil on Canvas, 48 x 40
Pelvis Series, Red and Yellow, 1945, 36 x 48
Pelvic bones, held up, are wondrous against the sky's blue
I felt would always be there, fixed, long after Man's
Destructiveness is finished. Cut sharply, they are a beauty
At the center of something unique, both horrifying and grand,
Empty, yet keenly alive. Perfect ovals, my eye captures
Them as elopements toward Infinity, absent any middle ground,
No perspective intervening between Birth and Death, treasures
I searched for among the camposantos until they were found.
Now red encircles the yellow, the acetabulum, the vinegar cup,
The foramen of blood, Batter, then, my heart,
Oppenheimer, quoting Donne, Three-personed Deity, now his Trinity,
His opening of an orifice for God to sculpt.
What colors, I would ask, could be left for the pacifist artist
Who magnifies emptiness, who paints Death against the desert sky.
- Randy Spencer
Photos courtesy of the Georgia O’Keefe Museum
Randy Spencer is a retired child psychiatrist living on the lake in Chapin. He is a published poet and short story writer, who most recently was a Pushcart Award nominee for a poem about the Ukraine war. His upcoming book from Muddy Ford Press is a series of interconnected poems taking place in Andersonville Military Prison in Georgia during the Civil War, but the themes are universal and timeless. He is currently working on a novella that reimagines Remarque's classic World War II novel, A Time to Love and a Time to Die, but is set in the current conflict in Ukraine.
