Murphy Writing of Stockton University Presents
This entry is part of Getaway Reads, an e-mail series that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty.
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Facing It
by Yusef Komunyakaa
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn’t
dammit: No tears.
I’m stone. I’m flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way—the stone lets me go.
I turn that way—I’m inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap’s white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman’s blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird’s
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet’s image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I’m a window.
He’s lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she’s brushing a boy’s hair.
A World of Daughters
by Yusef Komunyakaa
© Yusef Komunyakaa. Poetry, 2017.
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The Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway and Murphy Writing are programs of Stockton University
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Want to study with Yusef Komunyakaa? Yusef will lead three special Advanced Poetry Workshop sessions at the 2020 Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway.
Yusef Komunyakaa’s books of poetry include Neon Vernacular (for which he received the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry), Taboo, Warhorses, The Emperor of Water Clocks and many others. His plays, performance art and libretti have been performed nationally and include Wakonda’s Dream, Saturnalia, Testimony and Gilgamesh: a verse play. He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Louisiana Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. He currently teaches at New York University. Listen to him read his poem “Facing It” or read more of his work. (If you have Netflix, look for Yusef in The OA, season 1, episode 2.)
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