I Call, You Respond

A Guest Series Curated by Nicole Rollender. Intro to project here.

Call and Response: “Metempsychosis”

CALL:

El Salvadoran poet Claribel Alegria, who has written nine books of poetry and prose, has long been a voice for self-determination in her homeland, even though she lived in self-imposed exile in North Africa with her family for a time. Alegria’s long relationship with her husband, Darwin “Bud” Flakoll – spiritual, extremely intimate, devoted to art and dedicated to humanitarian and social justice activities – started as a three-month fiery courtship and a quick marriage and grew into a rich, collaborative life of testimonio. Shortly before Alegria and Flakoll were to go on a trip to southern Asia in 1995, Flakoll passed away. Alegria traveled to Singapore, Bangkok and Jakarta with her husband’s soul, as she has said, and wrote her poetry collection, Sorrow, about that trip – and her posthumous dialogue with her husband.

For this call-and-response, I chose the poem “Metempsychosis,” which captures Alegria’s dual emotions of grief/wanting to die with her husband and acceptance/wanting to continue living, in such spare, short poems that offer wide, open spaces as the point of departure for reader response:

Metempsychosis

If there is a return
my wait has been long
and if there is not
it has been barely
a sudden lightning flash.

—From Sorrow, by Claribel Alegria

 RESPONSE #2: by Chris Ruvo

The lightning reference and theme of connectedness between two people reminded me of this poem I wrote:

Raining in Reverse
—for my brother

There was thunder in the floorboards,
and the rain fell up to the ceiling.

They’re strange, he thought,
these reversals of gravity,
waiting in the doorway,
a bloated gym bag at his feet,
as if an angel had pressed pause
on the video of the universe,
locking him into this moment.

In an upstairs apartment,
a gramophone played flapper classics,
and in all the vacant rooms, he heard
ghosts in rocking chairs, tapping their feet.

The tea-kettle lamp,
bulbless on the mantle,
recalled flea-market adventures,
and on the thrift-store couch,
the rumpled quilt indicated
the afternoon’s interlude.

They were all commas,
and when time resumed,
he carried a pause to the window.

She was in the back lot,
taking laundry from the line,
rain plastering her dress
to her like cellophane.

Beyond the lot’s broken fence,
Kansas offered him flatlands of escape.

But when he saw her cigarette
still between her lips,
sagging, extinguished,
and the wicker basket stuffed with clothes,
he thought,
Maybe it’s time to heat some coffee.

***

Chris Ruvo makes a living playing around with words in the Philadelphia area, which is sort of what he always wanted to do.