Shamanism 101

By Dean Young b. 1955 Dean Young

Like everyone, I wanted my animal

to be the hawk.

I thought I wanted the strength

to eat the eyes first then tear

into the fuse box of the chest

and soar away.

I needed help because I still

cowered under the shadow of my father,

a man who inspected picture tubes

five out of seven nights,

who woke to breakfast on burnt roast

except the two weeks he’d sleep

on a Jersey beach and throw me

into the gasoline-sheened waves.

I loved him dying indebted

not knowing to what,

thinking his pension would be enough,

released not knowing from what,

gumming at something I was afraid

to get close enough to hear, afraid

of what I was co-signing. So maybe

the elephant. The elephant knows

when one of its own is suffering

up to six miles away. Charges across

the desert cognizant of the futility.

How can I be forgiven when I don’t know

what I need forgiving for? Sometimes

the urges are too extreme: to slap

on the brakes and scream, to bite the haunch

of some passing perfume, so maybe my animal

is the tiger. Or shark.

Or centipede.

But I know I’m smaller than that,

filling notebooks with clumsy versions

of one plaint, one pheromonal call,

clamoring over a crumb that I think

is the world, baffled by the splotch

of one of my own crushed kind,

almost sweet, a sort of tar,

following a trail of one or two molecules,

leaving a trail

of one or two molecules.

Dean Young, “Shamanism 101” from Skid. Copyright © 2002 by Dean Young. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Reprinted with the permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press, www.pitt.edu/~press/.

Source: Skid (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002)

Biography

Poet Dean Young was born in Columbia, Pennsylvania, and received his MFA from Indiana University. Recognized as one of the most energetic, influential poets writing today, his numerous collections of poetry include Strike Anywhere (1995), winner of the Colorado Prize for Poetry; Skid (2002), finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; Elegy on Toy Piano (2005), finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and Primitive Mentor (2008), . . .

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