First, a short poem for your day:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published  In an Aftertime  Memory gnaws on me in the blue silence  of the withered hillsides where  cracked, earth-stained quartz stones—  mammoth molars?—trip me.  I think I may be just a trick the sky is playing,  a vacancy for the cicada’s incessant trills  and pinecone bits snowing down  from the squirrels. Whatever falls through  the trees falls through my eyes.  It’s September. Wild sunflower faces  tilt back as if just freed from  the dark earth into sharp daylight  like the subway riders who emerged that day  to see people fleeing and falling  in the fast-forward collapse of civilized steel.  For years the workers found teeth  in the rubble, no bigger than the pebbles  I scatter now by walking. Whatever debris  falls through the lines I’m writing  in my head, it is an inadequacy.    Radha Marcum    pine soot tendon bone    Winner of the Washington Prize (The Word Works, 2024)

The poems of pine soot tendon bone invite us to calm ourselves, to let go of daily distractions and ease into the landscapes this remarkable poet shares with us, to let surprise enter when we’re ready to receive it.

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The title of the poem I’ve shared above has just a tinge of the dystopian, a survivor’s account of days in the aftermath of endtime. And the opening lines follow through. Memory is feral, violent; it gnaws. The hillsides here are withered. Scattered stones look like gigantic teeth scattered in a vast boneyard. Amid reminders of ruin, the individual shrinks, the I rendered insubstantial: “I think I may be just a trick the sky is playing, / a vacancy.” Still, the poet brings us into a peaceful scene, a quotidian scene, with “pinecone bits snowing down / from the squirrels,” where “wild sunflower faces / tilt back as if just freed from / the dark earth into sharp daylight.”

Then, smooth as the movement of a simile, sudden as a jetliner turned weapon, we are in the before of this aftertime, with “subway riders who emerged that day / to see people fleeing and falling / in the fast-forward collapse of civilized steel.” Notice how the before has been foreshadowed: Planes flying into skyscrapers looked like “a trick the sky is playing.” Sirens converging on September 11 were cicada-shrill. Shredded paper falling from office windows looked like “bits snowing down from the squirrels.”

Marcum doesn’t dwell on details of the day the towers fell. Rather, she touches on a single image that returns us to the here and now of her mountain walk: “the workers found teeth / in the rubble, no bigger than the pebbles / I scatter now by walking.” From boulders that look like mammoth molars to human teeth scattered like mountain pebbles.

“debris falls” as the poem closes with another echo, a slant rhyme reminiscent of Dickinson. Earlier, Marcum saw herself as a vacancy. Now, a humble admission, that her words—our words, any words—are an inadequacy.

About the Author

Radha Marcum is a poet, writer, editor, and teacher with a focus on the intersection of the environment, culture, and personal history. She is the recipient of the 2023 Washington Prize for pine soot tendon bone (The Word Works, 2024). Marcum’s first poetry collection, Bloodline (3: A Taos Press, 2017), which delves into her grandfather's involvement in building the first atomic bombs in New Mexico during World War II, won the New Mexico Book Award in Poetry in 2018.

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pine soot tendon bone is available here ⇒

Bloodline is available here ⇒

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