National Poetry Month : Virginia Konchan,

 

Schist    

 

 

I don’t attract what I want, but rather what I am:
schist, a medium-grade metamorphic rock formed
from mudstone or shale, with flat, sheet-like grains
in a preferred orientation, often finely interleaved
with feldspar and quartz.  Yes, I might produce
literature out of this conflict in my being, but
more likely is an ahistorical, silent trance.
I have lived long enough to see anecdotes
become statistics, like that line in the song
“A Little Fall of Rain” in Les Miserables,
when Éponine, bleeding to death from a
gunshot wound she took to save Marius,
says to him, in his arms:  “Don’t you fret,
Monsieur Marius, I don’t feel any pain.”
Just a dull clot on the stem of my brain,
symbolic of character types redeemed.
Who’s to say:  the general economy?
Swear on a holy book, curse me or turn:
I respect the rules of this establishment.
Ask any crystalline, tetrahedron form
how to value money, they’ll answer—
far better to last, than to burn. 

 

 

 

Author of three poetry collections, Hallelujah Time (Véhicule Press, 2021), Any God Will Do and The End of Spectacle (Carnegie Mellon UP, 2020 and 2018); a collection of short stories, Anatomical Gift (Noctuary Press, 2017); and four chapbooks, as well as coeditor (with Sarah Giragosian) of Marbles on the Floor: How to Assemble a Book of Poems (University of Akron Press, 2022), Virginia Konchan's work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, and The Believer.

National Poetry Month 2016: Virginia Konchan,

Clair de Lune

Who said the novel is a vaudeville show,

the six o’clock news, the mumblings

of wild men saddled by demons?

I want to give you everything:

lavish banquets, valuable books,

suits made out of horse hair and twine.

I want to give you the coronal sublime.

If I speak for the dead, I must leave

this animal of my body,

denatured unto dust.

The moon is in her stirrups

and the doctor’s prognosis is time.

Lay yourself on the tarmack;

ignore the buzzards of air.

Alien geometries may speak

in vile tongues but you,

a perfect storm, will prevail.

Author of a chapbook, Vox Populi (Finishing Line Press), and a collection of short stories, Anatomical Gift (forthcoming, Noctuary Press), Virginia Konchan’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Best New Poets, The Believer, Boston Review, The New Republic, and Verse.  Co-founder of Matter, a journal of poetry and political commentary, she lives in Montreal.