SD Poets You Should Know: Sara Henning

She’s not going to be a South Dakotan much longer, because she got a teaching gig in Texas, so I thought I’d give a shoutout to Sara Henning while she’s still our neighbor! I’m particularly fond of her poem “The Color of Ashes,” available at The Superstition Review:The Color of Ashes“We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call, no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.”—Tennessee WilliamsWhen the day is a vixen, and I'm hardas the egg she's raided from the nest'sbroken bivouac, and the goosenow hissing into the wet marsh heatcan't stop wanting watercress, lilypetal's sweetly pungent decoy,or the O of motherhood alreadystarving her, I think of the lovewho tucked a photo of his motherinto the dash when he'd joyride,how her supple neck shimmiedin the black dress's mouth,because if he died, the last imagescorched into his mind is her face.But isn't it always this singeof intimacy that swallows upeverything? Same love hidingin the 7 Eleven bathroombecause if the cops found himhe'd spend the night in jail, bruiseshe left on my body like the feraloregano my grandmother threw herwedding ring into after my grandfatherdied, as though her desireto set the house on fire wasn't herown body burning, flower overflower until pityingly beautiful,she could name the lie of longingthe burning made it turn: rame,jowl tendering the cluster,as if to say hush, what's shiveringthrough this devout acceleration,is simply waiting to be born.This is a fierce poem that seems to me to be in part about an inheritance, or at least a reoccurrence, of domestic violence. The speaker begins with an image for a rough day, as if she’s an egg stolen by a fox, and describes what that feeling of victimization, or at least vulnerability, makes her remember—“the love” who “bruise[d]” the speaker and is wanted by the cops, but who also carries a photo of his mother on his dashboard. The particular attention to the complexities of all the people here is one of my favorite qualities of this poem, and of course I love its lush language, too, particularly “the lie of longing / the burning made it turn,” that great alliteration of “lie of longing” and consonance of “burning” and “turn.” Those lines prepare you for both the I and u sounds in “jowl tendering the cluster.” I also enjoy the affirmation of the vulnerable, which I take to be meant by “what’s shivering,” in the last line—it “is simply waiting to be born,” an inchoate power. Featured image by Craig Bennett, under the creative commons license at Flickr. Post by Barbara DuffyMore SD Poets you should know