Episode 119: Line Breaks & The Iambic Lilt

When to break a line, Slushies. And why? What’s the shape your poem takes, and how does the poem’s form serve its complexities, subtleties, and heart? Three poems by Karl Meade are up for consideration in this episode of The Slush Pile, and they call the editors into conversation about trauma in literature, narrative (in)coherence as craft, and the pleasurable risks of stair-stepped stanzas. Poet L.J. Sysko joins the conversation on this  episode  of The Slush Pile as we discuss “Beach Fall,” “Christmas Break,” and “Doom Eager.” (If a tree falls in the woods, Slushies. Ammiright?)   At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Marion Wrenn, L. J. Sysko, Jason Schneiderman, Samantha Neugebauer, Alex J. Tunney   Karl Meade’s work been published in many literary magazines, a few of which he didn’t even donate heavily to, or previously serve as editor—including Literary Review of Canada, Tusculum Review, Arc Poetry Magazine, Grain Magazine, Chronogram, Umbrella Factory Magazine, Contemporary Verse 2, Event Magazine, The Fiddlehead, Open Letter, Under the Sun, and Dandelion. His work has also been mistakenly longlisted for four CBC Literary Prizes, shortlisted for The Malahat Review’s Open Season Creative Nonfiction Award, and Arc Poetry Magazine’s Poem of the Year. His novel, Odd Jobs, written as a solemn literary manifesto, was a finalist for the Foreword Reviews Book of the Year for Humor, and an iTunes Top 20 Arts and Literature podcast—“Laugh Out Loud,” one listener said of this grave work.   Karl’s chapbook “Doom Eager” has just been released in September 2023 by Raven Chapbooks, just in time for us to publish this podcast, which has waited longer than it should for release!    Author website: www.karlmeade.com Guest Editor: L.J. Sysko   L.J. Sysko's work has been published in Voicemail Poems, The Pinch, Ploughshares, Rattle, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. She is the author of a poetry chapbook, BATTLEDORE (Finishing Line Press, New Women's Voices series). Poetry honors include several Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg awards, two fellowships from Delaware's Division of the Arts, and poetry finalist recognition from The Fourth River, The Pinch, and Soundings East. Sysko holds an MFA in poetry from New England College.   X: @lj_sysko Instagram: @lesliesysko Facebook: @lesliesysko Author website: http://www.ljsysko.com   beach fall for Holli and Terry   Mountain to stone, prairie to sand, redwood to ash, from here I can see the heart of the sea, but not the beach   he fell on. I can see the picture window you sit in—waiting, watching the shore, iPad in lap, short-haired   Flossy at your side, the one who dug your dad’s water bottle from under him. I don’t know why   you brought his suitcase to his wake empty—what it was between you. Only he knew the words   you could not say. The doctors’ words for you—non-verbal, spectral—sent him back to rage. He said they weren’t worth the hair   on a dead chicken, that aut-ism was just too much self for them to take from you. He knew what his raging   love could do: four hours a night on the couch, talking through your iPad. He called himself Manitoban, the prairie farm-boy   who watched his dog run away for three days, the rain-man to lead you out, teach you how to mouth the O, the awe   in Holli. Yes, from here I can see the redwoods fall, the mountains decay, his sea-bed—   they say all the big hearts of the earth love where they fall, that his heart stopped   before he hit the beach. But we both know why his mouth was full of sand.     Christmas break for Doug and Arlene   The earth heaves, the ice cleaves. Erosion cuts the heart from every stone, while every night   I watch you drive your family past a starving glacier, turn from a truck laden with salt. You head off   the head on, take the bumper to the heart, leave your family straining your lungs’ last   words from the floor of the minivan. I’m on the floor beneath my desk, straining   to plug in the phone that I will blame for years: why did I plug it in? Every night   I watch the driver’s stoned eyes, petrified as your broken daughters in the back. Every night   I piece you all back together: brake, I say, turn over and over while the glacier leaves   its terminal moraine. I gather the stones, offer them to the moon, last witness   to your last turn. I turn to your wife, try to face her head on   with what the earth knows: core to crust, mouth to lung   the rupture comes, the rupture stays. Every Christmas   she wakes to the words brake, turn.     doom eager*       because one of us took a spike to the lung               a minivan to the chest                            hit the beach with his heart                                          to say nothing of the one                                                       whose only breath was broken water   because I believe               the hand, the wound, the moon                             is how I show you where I fell                                          through the hole I thought I was                                                       diving for pearls through the green                                                                     fuse of ice in my dream of you                             because I run naked                                         through the forest on a moonless night                                                        with a penlight in the hand that broke                                                        my mother’s heart waning at the seed                                                                     of light the moon won’t show me                                                                                    because its dark side calls all of us                             because I believe                                         I’ll find your heart in the east                                                      your marrow in the moon                                                                     fever just before the sun rises                                                                                   I’ll swim for it all day forgetting                                                                                                how the earth turns east south west                                                                                                                        circling all night forgetting                                                                                                                                                                                 there is no moon                                                                                                                                                                                 in the new moon                                                       because the only way out                                                                   is my hand on your chest                                                                                  I walk the shore all night                                                                                               dream back the back of the moon                                                                                                                                                               because the only cure                                                                                                                                                                                   for the wound                                                                                                                                                                                      is the wound     *after Ibsen, Graham, Moore: an Icelandic term for the isolation, restlessness, caughtness an artist experiences when sick with an idea