Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MEDIAS RES, by KAREN SWENSON


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MEDIAS RES, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The middle's where I wonder why as I wake
Last Line: Imagination, I wonder knowing why.
Subject(s): Culture Conflict; Indonesia; Travel; Dutch East Indies; Journeys; Trips


The middle's where I wonder why as I wake
and shake a roach, size of a half-smoked stogie,
from my backpack to the jungle. I'm the pale
anomaly, new mushroom species, sprouting
among the women on the bamboo platform
who suckle babies or coil up hair lustrous
as hot tar. In knee-high mud socks, they stroll
downhill from mired Jeeps to bathe. I follow,
slithering. Men heave and haul a dozen trucks
up switchbacks gray with elephant-hide mud.
All day eating canned Australian cheese or
searching for a private place to pee
while idle men follow me in the hope
men hope about all foreign women, I wonder why.

The last truck hauled, the jungle night's quick shutter
closes. The Jeep accelerates its shriek
up switchbacks, headlights extracting objects from
the night - mud ruts, a palm hairnetted with vines
looming at cliff edge, snailed fiddleheads
of tree ferns embedded in this dinosaur dark,
articulate with a wild vocabulary
of greens - Nile, absinthe, cucumber, jade, parrot.
The Jeep stops to let a truck strung with colored
lights like a Las Vegas chorine churn past.
Blindfolded by night, my ears are impaled
by the shrieking rabble of cicadas,
whose eyes are invisible except in
imagination, I wonder knowing why.





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