LATELY, I’VE BEEN WATCHING BLUEBIRDS
Once, when I was corn-stalk boned and sunrise young my mother
forced me to answer an impossible question.
It isn’t important—the question. The answer, too, isn’t crucial.
What I’d like to tell you is: she hit me in the mouth—my answer
unpleasing—my lips moon-swollen, my palms supine toward sky
in the why of it all, then and now. Punishment is the holiest love—
fear and submission and cower: a honey-thick greed.
I am many years from that discipline. Many years and firm breasts
and fine lines and a reflection that looks like her. To say it plain:
I am a woman still afraid,
still sorrow-heavy—telling pleasure to take a seat,
take a lap, take a knee, give me a mother-fucking minute to collect
what it all means to hurt so small and to hide so often. Let me
look her in the eye in my next life and answer her question the same.
Lately, I’ve been watching bluebirds gather shelled sunflower seeds
from my feeder. I am kind to them—telling them they are pieces of sky
and flawless with their full bellies, moon-gourged and rust-orange.
Anyway, I have fought for grains of joy:
these birds, the blood from my small and silent mouth, in flight.
Erica Anderson-Senter
Erica Anderson-Senter writes from Fort Wayne, IN. Her first full length collection of poetry, Midwestern Poet's Incomplete Guide to Symbolism, was published by EastOver Press in 2021. Her work has also appeared in Midwest Gothic, Ballast Poetry Journal, Boats Against the Current, and One Art. She has her MFA from Bennington College.
Author photo taken by Ruth Yaro
Why this Knocked Taylor out:
I mean first off, holy shit. LIke I care about poetic craft but even if this had none of that, the way it made me feel to read goes crazy. My heart ached and swooned and pounded and it made me feel alive and human and that's all I'm really looking for in a poem. Plus, we typically write the first version of the “why this knocked us out right when we read the poem, and then we add and edit it before we put up the poem and I STILL felt that way on every single subsequent reading of this poem.
The images in here are perfect, the pacing of the reveals and narrative is perfect. The heartache, perfect? The fact that the speaker is going to answer that question the same damn way in every single line? Perfect. I could go on and on but just...wow.
Mar and I talk a lot about the “lift” of a poem. The moment where the tension starts to really get you as a reader, in this poem that moment is three lines in with “What I’d like to tell you is: she hit me in the mouth”. The speaker has spent three lines talking about what they don't want to tell us, or dancing around what happened, and this is the moment we finally get to what the speaker does want to address. And the speaker addresses it head on. I love this kind of honesty and vulnerability in a poem. Sometimes fancy language gets in the way of reality, and sometimes reality is more impactful.
By the end of the poem I feel a completion both from the narrative, but in the emotional journey I am brought on in this poem. There is a physical evolution of the speaker, but more importantly there is an emotional one. The speaker is now able to look back on events plainly, and does so with impressive clarity. Instead of returning violence to the world, the speaker returns kindness.
Interview
What was your main focus as you wrote/revised this poem? The images? The emotion? The meaning? All of the above?
For years I’ve only alluded to the physical violence my little body endured growing up. (It wasn’t a lot but when it was, it WAS if that makes sense.) The night I wrote this poem I double-dog dared my “speaker” to be just a touch braver. And so, this poem crawled out of my pen.
My imagery comes from PLACE. I’m midwestern: we have lots of corn and lots of birds and with lots of uninterrupted skies, lots of shots of the moon. And listen, I’ve been trying to find remnants of joy in this healing era. Truly. Aren’t we all always kind of reaching toward the sky either with questioning posture or praise?
I wanted to braid all of this together: the memory, how difficult it is for me to dodge fear, my new relationship with my backyard birds, and how I am just trying to live a peaceful life away from The Mother-Figure Wound.
There is a moment in this poem where the speaker confesses they would answer the question that led to violence the same in every single life, talk to me about this moment and why it matters so much for this poem, and also to you as a person?
I suppose it really is a light vs. dark thing, ya know? The question can change from lifetime to lifetime, but I (speaker of the poem (lol)) want to always maintain the integrity needed to be *honest*, to look at the darkness and be a flash of heat lightning. Even as a tiny person I knew saying the true thing held a divine vibration. And so, if our spirits (both mother and poet and poet and everyone) are interwoven throughout lifetimes, and I think they are, I want to always have a lamp come out of my mouth.
What other poets do you think your work might be in conversation with and why? (Or who do you hope it might be in conversation with?)
I’m a real 90’s girl’s girl when it comes to who molded my poetic sensibilities. I don’t know if my poems and Jan Beatty and Dorianne Laux and Kim Addonizio could have tea together, but I’d like for that to happen! I also think I gleaned from Mark Wunderlich in his poetic-place discernment, but I’d never say my poems could be in conversation with his. Maybe one day, if I was a soft-ball team captain, I’d choose these three plus the ghosts of Linda Gregg and Jane Kenyon to be on my team.
I didn’t answer the actual question, but I believe all of these poets stuccoed the walls of my poetry house. And in that sense, maybe there’s a throughline.