Four Poems by Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon
This week in the PEN Poetry Series, guest editor Dawn Lundy Martin features four poems by Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon. About Van Clief-Stefanon’s work, Martin writes: “Of course, despite arguments to the contrary the lyric is powerful. I like it best in the hands of poets like Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon when the song bristles up against a content unfit for song: the girl sinful in her mind after church, fantasizing about ‘a man’s imagined hand on [her],’ for example. Van Clief-Stefanon is a master poet who pays attention to craft in ways reminiscent of Rita Dove—one of the first poets to introduce me to that beautiful glimmering gap between the said and the unsaid, that space of intrigue. It is here when Van Clief-Stefanon beckons us into her poetics—softly southern, intellectually rigorous, a warm breeze that might or might not bring a ravaging storm. These new poems by Van Clief-Stefanon also articulate a formal range, like in ‘Election Cycle,’ where she stretches her long legs inside the infinitely possibility around utterance.
I have known Lyrae a long time. We were at Cave Canem together in 1999 when the retreat was held in that beautiful monastery in upstate New York; we would light bonfires on the Hudson River and stay up all night talking poems, some of us smoking out by the smoking tree till the sun peeked up ushering us to bed. It. It has been over 15 years I’ve admired the precision and mystery of Lyrae’s work. Since it’s National Poetry Month I thought I’d present a master class, which these poems most certainly are.
Traveler
when I was a girl the reason I feared I would not be
snatched up at the rapture
was I daydreamed
a farm and a hand to tend
horses I mused
for myself. the way I rode
in the backseat of my mother’s Cordoba and felt
that man’s imagined hand on me
made me love
the long ride home from church.
more than heaven then. I wanted
an animal
and a servant. my flesh whispered.
a wild stream.
1989
One campus bled into the next:
The Generals’ colonnade into the Keydets’ parade grounds.
Dusk fading, blue blazered hellos from gentlemen on the Hill gave way
To “Good evening, ma’am,” on Post, a stern and formal
Flirtation. In dress whites, they touched their hats as we strode past,
Two black girls daring pass as evening approached
Between barrierless worlds of red
Brick, white stone
In 1989. We were the “Betties” of the joke. (“A W&L woman is like
a potted plant: pretty to look at but what can you do with her?”)
A two-day freshman,
I had not been to Goshen.
I had not touched a flint-lock.
I had not sung a murder ballad
yet. Oh, black Betty, bam-a-lam!
Another Truth
And I—who do not ride, and
do not swim
—Carl Phillips
The stable doors—wide open—
fill my closet with January’s
cold as though Virginia were
behind this door I close to sleep at night;
and the horse, dust
in the corners, what the room makes of
my skin, of night. If I
brush nightmare from
memory, I am left with
something breathing, a gesture
of care, firm bristles.
The scent of hay and apples, of ice
sweetens my bedclothes. I am in a dream
of Traveller without
weaponry: no musket fire
spooks or spurs his steady pulling.
I have erased the general
in heather and purple. Spring
is in winter as I am in this dream
that is my life, where what I teach
myself— I give— I keep. The horse
jigs past its own gravesite, heedless
of stars and bars staked
as though to hold it—: some mealy-mouthed old
half-magic. We do not rest there.
But land where I learned,
and love, I have taught myself,
to ride waking to my own
gifts, the sun’s glint on
green spice jars of statice—
there remembrance—
on my NY morning windowsill.
Election Cycle
How can he not grow
bored with this one particular
Insert pleasure? He is machining,
a piston on tiptoes. When he says yes—
America he puts a shh in front as if to keep some part
Ballot secret, to hush himself.
Candidate
Debate Because this is ] [, the ] [ he ] [ begins
Elect to disappear. He holds her by her ] [.
Fundraiser He presses
G.O.P
Homeland his nose to her cheek—is this why he wins
Justice
Klan awards for performance? If she ] [, he will ][ her,
Limits though punishment
News is one specialty, a slap or spit as likely.
Opposition
Platform More spit. Shh
Question —yes. He spreads his fingers to inspect
Running the white strands he’s shoved his hand into ][ for and
Senate
Terms accelerates. Is there
Update anywhere
Vote to go but down
White House into each minute he asks
she open
her eyes, tell him—(whether here is where the paper-white
bulbs,
crowded, stone set, wet
up to their shoulders will thrive? (Is this not
a better question?) An answer for winter?))
He is still
] [, asking
as the seasons move
backwards. Birds returning. Fall arrives,
as ridiculously
as love for any one
thing, much less this effort
on set
to grow something living.
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