Wendy Lotterman: I am Wendy Lotterman, and this is PoetryNow. I was thinking a bit about how some poems read as generous. They sort of seem to extend an invitation to come in and even take from what is inside. And some feel more social, and some feel actually really written for the purposes of kind of doubling down on or reaffirming the boundaries of the subject.

(READS POEM)

Pearl
 
Let us rob them. When this family
Is discovered to be the secret of that
Family, it is difficult to keep. Up in
The steam room, nursed by
Noise and heat, the faucet talks
Down tapestries of scenes telling
Something other than stories. Trial
By lyre, lying bilateral fires in a
Race-car twin-sized coincidence.
Winded by ten strokes of butterfly.
I don’t remember anything of the
 
Room. The event postdates the mood
It turned into. Agree, from here on,
To proceed down court without feet.
Floored by hands and extremely
Good reasons for being here. Missed
The meet. Met again by the museum,
On steps of gifts and grass. The
Best thing about my birthday is yours.
Weeks go by like strokes of fat on
Glass in heat, greased for ejection
In one piece. The open field opens
 
Its ear for you. One finger remains
Cautiously on the game piece, but
We leave before learning that the
Resemblance has several accepted
Spellings. Light speaks in threes.
Love infests the brain like seedless
Melon. In June, the gems are neither
House nor guest, but a reaction to
Someone coming in. Let them rob us,
And us them. The mold breeds weakly,
Like the roof was only ever a suggestion.

* * *

A few years ago, someone said to me kind of spontaneously that the Russian word for “invasion” was literally “oursness,” like the quality of something belonging to more than one. I was just sort of thinking about the idea of home invasion, I guess, but not in the kind of classical sense of someone breaking in and stealing stuff, but just what it means to have something that demarcates private property and to let someone in.

(QUOTING FROM POEM)

In June, the gems are neither / House nor guest, but a reaction to / Someone coming in. Let them rob us, /And us them.

I was also just thinking about how to kind of promote a certain kind of disregard for the way that we normally think about private property and just what is proper to oneself. And I think often a lyric poem is about something being proper to oneself. And even if this is my poem and there are a lot of references that relate in some way specifically to my life, I don’t really intend to emphasize that point. I intend to actually open it up.

(QUOTING FROM POEM)

Light speaks in threes. / Love infests the brain like seedless / Melon.

I am interested in creating a mood, and if I get a sense from the poem when I reread it of the mood that I wrote through and in, then I feel like maybe it’s possible that it’ll give that to someone else.

Katie Klocksin: That was Wendy Lotterman and her poem “Pearl.” I’m Katie Klocksin and this is PoetryNow, a production of the Poetry Foundation. For more about this series, go to poetryfoundation.org/poetrynow.