Public Abstract: Poems - Tapa dura

Acerca del autor

About the Author

Jane Huffman is a poet from Michigan. She received an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is currently a doctoral student at the University of Denver. A recipient of the 2019 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, Huffman is founder and editor-in-chief of Guesthouse, an online literary journal.

About the Judge

Dana Levin’s newest book of poetry Now Do You Know Where You Are (Copper Canyon Press 2022) was named one of the "Best Books of 2022" by NPR and was included on the  New York Times "100 Notable Books of 2022" list. Her first book, In the Surgical Theatre, was chosen by Louise Glück for the 1999 APR/Honickman First Book Prize and went on to receive numerous honors, including the 2003 PEN/Osterweil Award. Copper Canyon Press brought out her second book, Wedding Day, in 2005, and in 2011 Sky Burial, which The New Yorker called “utterly her own and utterly riveting.”

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Public Abstract

I swept

and am

sweeping, have

slept

and am sleeping.

I heaved the head

of the mop

to the hod

and I’m heaving.

I’m

sweating,

I’m wetting

the corn

of my broom.

I’m

washing

the floor

in the room

where I

waited for

reason.

I reasoned,

I teased

at the

edges of

reason.

Spirometry

I am under-interpreting my symptoms, the doctor says.

I have grown accustomed to them, and so I no longer interpret

them as abnormal. My account can no longer be trusted.

I watch his screens from inside the glass box. On one monitor,

green lines tick against a dark backdrop. On another, a cursor

draws absentmindedly, making the shape of a bread roll.

Now do it, the doctor says, as if you’re breathing against a

brick wall. On a third monitor, a dark circle expands and

contracts like a pulsing eyespot. Air buckles in the back of

my mouth.

So it says here you teach writing, the doctor says, here

at the University. His intonation makes it a question,

although it is not. The machine beeps, and I exhale fast and

hard

until my lungs are bottomed out. I’m so in love with interpretation

that I’m blue in the face from kissing it.