PURITAN ELEGY
The barnyard a buffet of buggery, two goats,
one mare, some sheep, even a turkey,
its laconic twitch impossible for you,
Thomas Granger, to resist, even when
it meant your death. Hung by the Puritans,
the first in America executed
by the state, you were sixteen, you were
what the Puritans never called
fucked up. Five centuries full of war, plagues,
make it easy, almost, to think
you were up to little more
than hijinks. I want to serve you
steam-riddled bowls of soup,
be mentorly in that obnoxious communal-minded way,
tell you to keep it in
your Pilgrim pants or find
amidst all the doe-eyed girls
one who stoked her own fire. But you’re dead,
hung after the animals
you’d taken were slaughtered
and thrown in a pit, burned to grim satisfaction, buried,
Leviticus 20:15 intoned.
You had to watch this
but see the readied noose
swaying. You had to enter in to history
but not heaven.
About Me
- Paul
- Paul Guest is the author of four volumes of poetry and a memoir. His debut, The Resurrection of the Body and the Ruin of the World, was awarded the 2002 New Issues Poetry Prize. His second collection, Notes for My Body Double, was awarded the 2006 Prairie Schooner Book Prize. His third collection, My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge, was published by Ecco Press/HarperCollins in 2008. His fourth collection, Because Everything Is Terrible, was published by Diode Editions. His poems have appeared in Harper's, The Paris Review, Poetry, Tin House, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. His memoir, One More Theory About Happiness, was published by Ecco in May 2010 and selected for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program. The recipient of a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2007 Whiting Writers' Award, Guest lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
8 comments:
in texas, buggery is legal, but dildoes will land you in jail.
in georgia, dildoes are legal, but buggery gets you excommunicated.
In my house, buggery with a dildo is a rite of passage...
An early "Happy T'Giving" to you too, Mr. Guest.
I love that T. Granger ended up on your radar, but how did he get there?
I certainly hope that this wasn't inspired by our visit... :)
No, but I think I mentioned plans to Eliot to make it a poem....;)
In Alabama, to buy a dildo you have to sign a form promising the seller you don't intend to use it for sexual purposes.
Speaking of all this bestiality, you should check out the documentary "Zoo," which is a singularly beautiful and insane experience. Kind of like "Days of Heaven" meets "The Thin Blue Line." A feast, however, for the eyes...
If you're serious about the subject of the post, I'd suggest dropping the final four lines. It's too damning against the people, and you're kind of "telling" Granger what he already knows.
Maybe the piece could end:
and thrown in a pit, burned to grim satisfaction, / buried, Leviticus 20:15 intoned. /
And if a man lie with beast /
Slay the beast
Needs something more, but turning Leviticus onto the hanging's audience could work. I'm thinking McKay and Dickey.
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