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John Murillo

Visiting Poet

John Murillo photo by Marcus Jackson

Poet Carolyn Forché describes John Murillo as “a poet for his time, equal to its urgency, and graced are we to have him among us in this time of need.” In fierce, unflinching poems that are as likely to reference Elizabeth Bishop as Notorious B.I.G, Murillo’s most recent collection, Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry (Four Way Books, 2020), contends with our country’s racism, violence, and literary history, while also uncovering complicated moments of grace. Murillo’s many honors include fellowships from the NEA and Cave Canem, a Pushcart Prize, and appearances in Best American Poetry 2017, 2019, and 2020. Murillo teaches at Wesleyan University.

 

Select Poems

Crips, Bloods, and butterflies.

   A sunflower somehow planted

in the alley. Its broken neck.

   Maybe memory is all the home

you get. And rage, where you 

   first learn how fragile the axis

upon which everything tilts.

   But to say you’ve come to terms 

with a city that’s never loved you

   might be overstating things a bit.

All you know is there was once

   a walk-up where now sits a lot,

vacant, and rats in deep grass

   hide themselves from the day.

That one apartment fire

   set back in ’76—one the streets

called arson to collect a claim—

   could not do, ultimately, what

the city itself did, left to its own dank

   devices, some sixteen years later.

Rebellions, said some. Riots, 

   said the rest. In any case, flames;

and the home you knew, ash.

   It’s not an actual memory, but

you remember it still: a rust-

   bottomed Datsun handed down,

then stolen. Stripped, recovered,

   and built back from bolts.

Driving away in May. 1992.

   What’s left of that life quivers 

in the rearview—the world on fire,

   and half your head with it.

Start with loss. Lose everything. Then lose it all again.

Lose a good woman on a bad day. Find a better woman,

then lose five friends chasing her. Learn to lose as if

Your life depended on it. Learn that your life depends on it.

Learn it like karate, like riding a bike. Learn it, master it.

Lose money, lose time, lose your natural mind.

Get left behind, then learn to leave others. Lose and

lose again. Measure a father's coffin against a cousin's

crashing T-cells. Kiss your sister through prison glass.

Know why your woman's not answering her phone.

Lose sleep. Lose religion. Lose your wallet in El Segundo.

Open your window. Listen: the last slow notes

of a Donny Hathaway song. A child crying. Listen:

a drunk man is cussing out the moon. He sounds like

your dead uncle, who, before he left, lost a leg

to sugar. Shame. Learn what's given can be taken;

what can be taken, will. This you can bet on without

losing. Sure as nightfall and an empty bed. Lose

and lose again. Lose until it's second nature. Losing

farther, losing faster.
Lean out your open window, listen:

the child is laughing now. No, it's the drunk man again

in the street, losing his voice, suffering each invisible star.

“And at times, didn’t the whole country try to break his skin?”

        —Tim Seibles

 

You strike your one good match to watch its bloom

and jook, a swan song just before a night 

wind comes to snuff it. That’s the kind of day

it’s been. Your Black & Mild, now, useless as

a prayer pressed between your lips. God damn

the wind. And everything it brings. You hit

the corner store to cop a light, and spy

the trouble rising in the cashier’s eyes.

TV reports some whack job shot two cops

then popped himself, here, in the borough, just

one mile away. You’ve heard this one before.

In which there’s blood. In which a black man snaps.

In which things burn. You buy your matches. Christ

is watching from the wall art, swathed in fire.

About John

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Poetry Center Reading Dates: December 2020