Stillman Wagstaff and Dr. Kimberly Johnson, English
My ORCA grant was given to fund a creative project of original poetry that would simultaneously fulfill the honors requirement. Since my funding, I have written nearly 40 new poems and been able to devote over 100 hours to the project with the financial independence the funding has given me. I have included two of the poems written since I have been funded below.
When My Grandfather Died, Children Were Ice-Skating Outside My Window
I would like to tell my friends to cease
from vanishing. Like to
tell myself, even,
but the very motion of my lips
is wearying, not to mention
the terrible force needed to shake my vocal cords
into bellowing. I fear the pointless loss
of that which I must conserve. I will
never recover this utterance, once spoken
it will be forever elusive, ephemeral, retreating,
a trembling breath, flighty and leaping beyond conception. Yes,
I would like to tell my friends
to cease—not
to vanish, to remain—to continuously be,
to let their fleshy fingers smudge my shirt sleeves,
to hold their own eyelids open and peer into dry cataracts,
to smell of ointment and whole milk,
to remember their own ankles bunched up in leather ice skates,
to swing their arms wildly arcing from shoulder to waist among leaves,
tenuously poised and quivering—hoping not to crumb(p)le any further,
to hang against hope to the enduring branch,
not to drop noiselessly upon the frozen lake or under—
not—after all—to vanish
to end.
Sariah’s Death
The way the knife was held,
its glistening clean teeth, menaced the young boy’s unsleepful laying.
Perhaps the miracle is to see the staggering will of such a father,
one who could stretch out his arm
and leave it there,
suspending so much in the balance. Many have wrestled
with such men or their sons, their distant eyesight, their limping gait
the hip-bone jutting from its old slipping,
even their hopeless/hopeful waiting,
their exhaustion, the emptying of their homes
and the sandy expanse stretching forever nowheres.
I wonder what was the last thing
Sarah saw before she died. Was she also given a vision—
did it contain her earlymorning vanished son lying prone
on a hasty altar, her trembling husband, sire for her
but one laughing time, face ashen and bare of all laughter now?
Did it close then, with the knife stretching towards
the throat of one who was named by the memory of laughter,
still trusting? I imagine some accident of celestial airwaves,
her connection being abruptly cut
at the crucial moment, moments before
the surprising evening sacrifice. I see Sarah,
once Sariah, stricken, falling back upon her haunches and weeping
for her bleeding son and the terrified father
who expected (God knows what? An angel?
A ram? Rain? The knife to turn to dust? Mercy?)
something that could not be late in coming,
that must not keep him waiting, something, unseen by Sarah.
I can see Sarah dying there, in their shaded tent
not seeing Isaac’s deliverance, only glimpsing
the shining angel too late, too late.
The ORCA experience has been tremendously valuable for me, since it has given me financial support to pursue and develop a meaningful project that will hopefully lead to greater things. I won both the Hart-Larson Poetry Contest and the Caroline Barnes Memorial Award last year with poems written and edited since receiving the grant. This final project will be published as my honors capstone project. Several poems have been submitted for publication will hopefully be published individually in the coming year.