Victory

By Fanny Howe b. 1940 Fanny Howe

There is no Rescue Mission where it isn’t freezing

from the need that created it. The lost children

distill to pure chemical. Where Good is called No-Tone

it’s the one who cries out who doesn’t get a coat.

The children fuse colors because they don’t want to

separate. Daughters shot off of hydrants who cut

each other in the neck and gut, don’t care

which one of them will end up later in surgery.

And drugged sons pretending to be costumes,

well, they’re not welcome to comprehension either.

Why does a wild child confuse a moon

with a hole in his skin?

One was born soaked in gin.

His first sip was from a bottle of denial.

What can “leave me alone” mean after that?

The system is settled, dimensions fixed.

Another one’s hand feels like a starfish.

Makes me hysterical like the word perestroika.

But they all dig the way the pepper is rosy in the vodka.

It’s verbocity that creates jokers.

Brick and grit are the candy and frosting

where volunteers and teachers write cards that go:

“Donate books that say NOT and NO and poets

who say Urn instead of Oh.”

How do the children convert their troubles

into hip-hop? Dunno—but it’s wonderful.

Fanny Howe, “Victory” from One Crossed Out. Copyright © 1997 by Fanny Howe. Reprinted with the permission of Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org.

Source: One Crossed Out (Graywolf Press, 1997)

Biography

Fanny Howe is the author of more than 20 books of poetry and prose. “If someone is alone reading my poems, I hope it would be like reading someone’s notebook. A record. Of a place, beauty, difficulty. A familiar daily struggle,” Fanny Howe explained in a 2004 interview with the Kenyon Review. Indeed, more than a subject or theme, the process of recording experience is central to Howe’s poetry. Her work explores grammatical . . .

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