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Sometimes Never

By Joyce Sutphen b. 1949 Joyce Sutphen

Talking, we begin to find the way into

our hearts, we who knew no words,

words being a rare commodity

in those countries we left behind.

Both refugees and similarly deprived,

we marvel at the many things there

are to say: so many variations

and colors of the same thought, so

many different lengths in the words

that line up together on our tongues.

No scarcity, no rationing, no

waiting in line in order to buy

the same answer we heard each time

we asked, that one word, owned by

the state, manufactured by the state,

serving all purposes equally alike:

No, No, No, and sometimes Never.

Source: Poetry (September 1998).

Biography

Joyce Sutphen grew up on a farm in Minnesota. She earned a PhD in Renaissance drama from the University of Minnesota, and has taught British literature and creative writing at Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, Minnesota. Her first collection of poems, Straight Out of View (1995), won the Barnard Women’s Poets Prize. Subsequent collections include Coming Back to the Body (2000), a Minnesota Book Award finalist, Naming the . . .

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