Poetry Magazine, Featured Poet: Forrest Hamer, February 2002

Poetry Magazine

Forrest Hamer

USA

Forrest Hamer is the author of Call & Response (Alice James, 1995), winner of the Beatrice Hawley Award; Middle Ear (Roundhouse, 2000), winner of the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association Award; and Terrain (Hip Pocket Press, 1998) with Dan Bellm and Molly Fisk. His work has appeared in many journals, among them Callaloo, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly and ZYZZYVA; and has been anthologized in Poet's Choice: Poems for Everyday Life, The Geography of Home: California's Poetry of Place, Word of Mouth: An Anthology of Gay American Poetry, Times Ten: An Anthology of Northern California Poets, and the 1994 and 2000 editions of The
Best American Poetry. Hamer is also an Oakland psychologist, candidate psychoanalyst, and a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.

13 Suppositions
about the Ubiquitous

Suppose your life were a body.
Suppose in the middle of the body you began to die.

Suppose your life lost all its hungers, and in the minute you were
full and not desiring, you noticed a voice from the inner ear
singing names.
Suppose you listened to yourself.

Suppose you suddenly budded wings, and you were lifted above earth
and you looked down to see your kin looking for you.
Suppose the body is a new lesson.

Supposing middle.

Suppose the curiosity of a child imagining through clothes is first
evidence of dying.
Suppose your body wants another’s, but will only come into it for what is
a long minute each time.

Suppose you suddenly bud wings, and you lift yourself over earth
and look back to see your kin looking for you, but you are not yourself.
Suppose you are listening.

Suppose in the middle of your body you begin to die.
Suppose the body the beginning.

Arrival

They say Robert Johnson couldn’t play that guitar one lick
until he gave his soul away, and that his voice near itched.
Folks became amazed by the music he could make,
                                    once they listened.

Looking at birds, my friend can see the dinosaurs they were.
They scare her winging down. She can’t decide the sound.

They say before he was cursed to live on his belly, give up
                the terrible wings, Lucifer was loved.
They say that night he became a black man offering
                 vision, a faithful woman, then fame,
          and each time Johnson refused. His life was more
                             than half over, he could tell.

I believe insight doesn’t happen at once.
I believe we ready ourselves that one more time and look
        differently, and change happens with small sights
    which accrete and feather. We see, we become.

When Alice and KwanLam were married, red-winged blackbirds came
from all over the grove, making the bamboo whish.

Crossroads

Crossed over the river and the river went dry
Crossed over the river, the river went dry
Saw myself drowning and I couldn’t see why

Come up for air and the day said noon
Come up for air, said the air read noon
Day said, Son, you better mind something soon

Sink back down, felt my spirits leave high
Sink back down, I felt my spirits lift high
Didn’t know if I was gonna die

A man give his hand and he pulled me to the shore
Man give his hand, pulled me over to the shore
Told me if I come I wouldn’t drown no more

Me and the man walked and talked all day and night
Me and the man, we walked, we talked all day and night
We started wrestling til the very lip of light

I put my mind on evil sitting in my soul
Put my mind on evil just a-sitting on my soul
Struggling with the devil make a soul old

I looked at my face and my life seem small
Looked hard at my face and this life it look so small
All of a sudden didn’t bother me at all

Returned to the river and I stood at the shore
Went back to the river and I stood right at the shore
Decided to myself needn’t fight no more

Instrument

Each note has its noise--approximations, clack
Each finger keens against slack wire.

And each noise notes this memory:

Loneliest in things:

wrested triumph, Next and necessary loss.

Middle Ear

Say that moment crossing over isn’t heard
Say the hammer-anvil-stirrup don’t unfurl
Say the balance was upset

Say this balance was upset
Say the outside world doesn’t ring

Say the mind’s ear listening to an odd man singing
Say the moment crossing over starting somewhere out and in
Say the balance was upset

Say this balance was upset, and the singing falls faint
Say you turn yourself away from crowds of sound

Say the awed man singing sings to you

Say you don’t know him. You don’t.

And the balance is upset

Say the inside singing and the outside ringing and
the moment crossing over breathing in
Say the whisper of the man sieves through
Say the moment crossing over is a stranger wisp

And the balance is upset
And the balance is upset

Say the moment crossing over rights the left
Say the moment crossing over is the ringing ear writing
Say the moment crossing over ends hear

© Copyright 2000. Middle Ear (Roundhouse, 2000)