I will dive to the bottom of the hotel pool and find my mother’s hairpin.
With the mouth of a drowning woman on my lap,
I will add her breath to mine. In the dark, I will lay the thin white sheet
of the moonlight over the blue plums of my wife’s breasts.
With the new planet I discovered just when I thought I was losing my sight,
I will love another man because I will be a woman.
Everything important will never as yet have happened. Let it happen.
I will throw a lit match on the secrets my body
has kept from me and stand in the fire. The people I have sawed in half
will appear in my bedroom mirror, getting dressed.
Jason Shinder, “The New Year” from Stupid Hope. Copyright © 2009 by Jason Shinder. Reprinted by permission of Graywolf Press, www.graywolfpress.org
Source:
Stupid Hope (Graywolf Press, 2009)
Discover this poem’s context and related poetry, articles, and media.
Poet
Jason Shinder
1955–2008
POET’S REGION
U.S., Mid-Atlantic
Subjects
Living,
The Body,
Relationships,
Men & Women,
Family & Ancestors,
Nature,
Stars, Planets, Heavens
Poetic Terms
Free Verse,
Imagery
Born in Brooklyn, poet and editor Jason Shinder grew up there and in Merrick, New York. He earned a BA at Skidmore College.
Shinder is the author of three collections of poetry: the posthumously published Stupid Hope (2009), Among Women (2001), and Every Room We Ever Slept In (1993), a New York Public Library Notable Book. In a review of Among Women, poet Carol Muske-Dukes observed, “I don’t know of any male poet that . . .
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Poem Categorization
SUBJECT
Living,
The Body,
Relationships,
Men & Women,
Family & Ancestors,
Nature,
Stars, Planets, Heavens
POET’S REGION
U.S., Mid-Atlantic
Poetic Terms
Free Verse,
Imagery
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