Runaway

New Poems

Jorie Graham

• Publisher: Ecco
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780063036710
• eBook ISBN:
  9780063036727
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Essays
• Index: Literature

An NPR Best Book of the Year

A new collection of poetry from one of our most acclaimed contemporary poets, Pulitzer Prize winner Jorie Graham

In her formidable and clairvoyant new collection, Runaway, Jorie Graham deepens her vision of our futurity. What of us will survive? Identity may be precarious, but perhaps love is not? Keeping pace with the desperate runaway of climate change, social disruption, our new mass migrations, she struggles to reimagine a habitable present—a now—in which we might endure, wary, undaunted, ever-inventive, "counting silently towards infinity." Graham's essential voice guides us fluently "as we pass here now into the next-on world," what future we have surging powerfully through these pages, where the poet implores us "to the last be human."

III

SAM’S DREAM

One day there is no day because there is no day

before, no yesterday, then a now, & time, & a cell

divides and you, you are in time, time is in you, as

multiplying now u slip into our stream, or is it u grow

a piece of stream in us, is it flesh or time you grow,

how, is it an American you grow, week 28, when we

are told dreaming begins. Welcome. Truest stranger.

Perhaps one of the last conceived & carried in womb.

Father and mother singular and known. Born of

human body. Not among the perfected ones yet. No. A

mere human, all firsthand knowledge, flying in as if

kindling—natural. The last breath before the first

breath is mystery. Then u burn into gaze, thought,

knowledge of oblivion. Rock yourself. Kick so I can

feel you out here. Push your hands against the

chamber. The world is exhausted. I moisten my lips

and try to remember a song. I have to have a song to

sing you from out here. They say you now hear vividly.

This could have been a paradise my song begins. No,

this is, was, is, never will be again, will be, we hope

desperately wasn’t a dream, maybe in your dream

now there is a clue, can you dream the clue, you who

are dreaming what having had no life to dream of,

dream from—what populates you—bloodflow and

lightswirl, stammering of ventricles, attempts at

motion, absorbings, incompletions, fluidities—do you

have temptation yet, or even the meanwhile—such a

mature duration this meanwhile, how it intensifies

this present—or nevertheless—no beyond of course

in your dream what could be beyond—no

defeat as so far no defeat—cells hum—no partiality

as all grows in your first dream which is the dream of

what you are—is that right—no attempt as there is

no attempting yet—no privacy—I laugh to myself

writing the word—oh look at that word—no

either/or—but yes light filtering-in, root-darknesses,

motion—and the laughter, do you hear it from us out

here, us, can you hear that strain of what we call

sincerity—Oh. Remain unknown. Know no daybreak

ever. Dream of no running from fire, no being shoved

into mass grave others falling over you, dream of no

bot, no capture filter store—no algorithmic memory,

no hope, realism, knowing, no quest-for, selling-of,

accosting violently to have, no lemon-color of the end

of day, no sudden happiness, no suddenly. It is much

bigger, faster—try to hear out—this place you’re

being fired into—other in it—judgment of other—

logic, representation, nightmare—how to prepare

you—what do you dream—what must I sing—it says

you cry in there & laugh—out here a late October

rain has started down, soon you shall put your small

hand out & one of us will say slowly and outloud rain

and you will say rain—but what is that on your hand

which falling has come round again in the forever of

again to reach your waiting upturned hand. I look up

now. Clouds drift. Evaporation is a thing. That our only

system is awry a thing. That u will see rains such as I

have never seen a thing. Plain sadness, this hand-knit

sweater, old things, maybe u shall have some of—in

this my song—in my long song not telling u about the

paradise, abandoning my song of what’s no longer

possible, that song, it is a thing. Oh normalcy, what a

song I would sing you. Child u shall god willing come

out into the being known. First thing will be the

visible. That’s the first step of our dream, the dream of

here. You will see motes in light. And lights inside the

light which can go out. A different dark. And spirits

wind exhaustion a heavy thing attached to you—your

entity—as u enter history and it—so bright, correct,

awake, speaking and crying-out—begins. And all the

rest begins. Amazing, you were not everything after

all. Out you come into legibility. Difference. Why

shouldn’t all be the same thing? It’s a thing, says the

stranger nearby, it’s a new thing, t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Publisher’s Note
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• I
• II
• III
• IV
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Also by Jorie Graham
• Copyright
• About the Publisher