For New Manifestations of the Godhead
Becky asks you to dinner. A howl that shatters mountains
follows you around as you try on a dress made of light.
You emerge from a river to feel your face burst into flowers.
You search for your lost sons and find them full grown. Becky knows
you can find fresh fruit in the dead of winter. You pick up storm
language on your car radio. Strip malls. A nail salon smolders.
Storefronts twist into dragon faces. Woodland creatures line up
at the roadside to bow as you drive past. A luminous snarl.
Across the sky. Becky calls. You are late. You are stuffing
strawberries into shopping carts. You are approaching middle
age sanely, but it never approaches you. Annoying, the way
no one can hear your name without bleeding from the ears.
A persistent howl. The dude with the lightning helmet,
skateboarder of suburban tennis courts you share
your bed with. Some nights. Becky calls. You are still late.
She is old, condenses the years into a half-hour conversation.
You can’t understand what happened. Flash of fangs
in your rearview. It rains. Your hair grows several inches.
On the radio, smoky voices address you. Becky doesn’t call,
and the strawberries remain ageless. Over a horizon
of half-pipes the lightning-helmed lord ascends on his golden
skateboard. Every million years or so you see the wolf
devour the sky. You return to your apartment and pack quietly
for the trip back home.
| Matt Broaddus |
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levelheaded: For New Manifestations of the Godhead
The word “For” in the title of this week’s poem is an important one. It suggests that the text titled “New Manifestations of the Godhead” is incomplete, and that this poem is potential raw material for a work by that name. The poem itself falls short of being proof for the existence of God. Instead, Matt Broaddus’ lines are suggestions, attempts to explain the unexplainable.
These lines blend the everyday and the imaginative, realism and fantasy. Each sentence is filled with the potential to mean several ways. Becky’s dinner invite may be dreaded or welcomed. “A howl that shatters mountains” may be wondrous or terrifying. A face that can “burst into flowers” is, of course, literally impossible, yet the figurative meaning of this phrase is easily comprehensible.
Each of these sentences exists independently—distinct pieces of evidence to be considered when determining if God does or does not exist. The lack of strict rhyme or meter supports such a read. However, as enjambed lines of poetry making up one single stanza, these words also work in relation to one another. “Strip malls” and “dragon faces”—different as they may be—are linked in our speaker’s quest for proof. “A persistent howl” shows up in line 13, harking back to line one. “Becky calls” in line 15, then a few lines later “Becky doesn’t call.”
In the above instances, Broaddus acknowledges the contradictions inherent in life, and the difficulty of proving a mystery. He reminds us how our world—or at least our perception of it and therefore, our happiness within it—can be so drastically altered by the details. If the poem proves anything, it’s that small events and the narrative that they combine to create are nothing short of miraculous.
– The Editors
