1453: Closing Time; Iskandariya by Brigit Pegeen Kelly

Hey there, it's Maggie. For the next two weeks of episodes, the poet Samir Bersier will be guest hosting the slowdown. I hope you enjoy her selections and reflection. I'll return on February 18th. (gentle music) - I'm Samir Bersier, and this is The Slowdown. (gentle music) - Born on October 27th, I've been learning about scorpions all my life. Delicate but dangerous. These dark dwellers have long been central to our many mythologies. They are fragile. You can step on any of the smallest ones and kill it. But as Indiana Jones warned us, it's the smallest scorpions which are the most deadly. In truth, scorpions don't want to sting you. They want to be left alone. They aren't aggressive, they're reclusive, and only tend to attack and self-defense. Today's poem, in ways that I aspire to in my own writing life, manages to take a deep breath in and collapse 2,000 years of danger into a single moment of misunderstanding. Blowing its notes, its bath of air with the diaphragmatic power of an operatic diva, this poem walks our own missteps on the eight small feet and single stinging tail of a scorpion. Closing time is Condoria by Bridget Pigine Kelly. It was not a scorpion I asked for, I asked for a fish, but maybe God misheard my request. Maybe God thought I said not some sort of fish, but a scorpion fish. A request he would surely have granted being a goodly God, but then he forgot the fish, attached to the scorpion because God too forgets, everything forgets. So instead of an edible fish, any small fish, sweet or sour, or even the grotesque buffoonery of the striped scorpion fish, crowned with spines and followed by many tails, a veritable side show of a fish. Instead of these, I was given an insect, a peculiar prehistoric creature, part lobster, part spider, part bell ringer, part son of a fallen star, something like a disfigured armored dog. That a thing you can eat, or even take on a meaningful walk so ugly as it, so stiffly does its step as if on ice freezing again and again in mid-air like a listening ear, and then scuttling backwards or leaping madly forward, it's deadly tail doing a st. Vitus jig. God gave me a scorpion. A venomous creature to be sure, a bug with the bite of Cleopatra's ass, but not as I soon found out, despite the dark gossip, a lover of violence, or a hater of men. In truth, it is shy, the scorpion. A creature with eight eyes and almost no sight, who shuns the daylight and is driven mad by fire, who favors the lonely spot and feeds on nothing much, and only throws out its poison barb when backed against a wall. A thing like me, but not the thing I asked for. A thing by accident or design, I am now attached to. And so I draw the curtains, and so I lay out strange dishes, and so I step softly, and so I do not speak and only twice. In many years have I been stung. Both times, because I'm thinking, I let in the terrible light. And sometimes now, when I watch the scorpion sleep, I see how fine he is, how rare. This creature called lung book or mortal book because of his strange organs of breath. His lungs are holes in his body, which open and close. And inside the holes are stiffened membranes, arranged like the pages of a book. Imagine that. And when the holes open, the pages rise up and unfold, and the blood that circles through them touches the air, and by this bath of air, the blood is made pure. Here's a house of books, my shy scorpion, carrying in his belly all the perishable manuscripts. A little mirror of the library at Alexandria, which burned. (gentle music) The Slowdown is a production of American public media and partnership with the Poetry Foundation. To get a poem delivered to you daily, go to slowdownshow.org, and sign up for our newsletter. And find us on Instagram at SlowdownShow and BlueSky at slowdownshow.org. - Hi, it's Maggie. Thanks for listening to The Slowdown. Whether you press play to find calm or vivid inspiration, we're glad you're here. As a public media podcast, we rely on listener support to share these moments of poetry. Please consider donating today at slowdownshow.org/donate.