Leveler Poetry Journal
About Leveler Submission Guidelines More Poems

Growing Up

 

What a disappointment
to realize the utter measure of men.
On the clocks of universes,
you towered for seconds.

 

Look down.
See your cartilage erode,
feel your discs flatten,
know your shrinking bones.

 

Each year, your up-righteous stances
grow more difficult.

 

Wobble across finish lines
and stand on shards.




Anna Kander

levelheaded: Growing Up

 

There’s anger in the speaker’s voice, if not outright disgust. We take two things from this tone. One, that the speakers speaks their truth. The other, that it’s a truth that is hard to express in any other way. A more forgiving voice would be self-defeating. A more ambiguous take belongs somewhere else. For Anna Kander’s speaker speaking of men’s achievements or lack thereof, there is no other way but to speak unfiltered, uncompromised.

 

The language is grand, speaking of the “measure of men” and the “clocks of universes.” We gather it’s part of the intent to portray men as the opposite of grand. Men’s grandeur is “shrinking,” “erod[ing],” “flatten[ing].” It is exposed as a thing that “towered for seconds.” The poem thus establishes an irony of style based on men’s perception of their history, allowing the speaker to use an imposing tone to match—but more so contradict—any such grandness.

 

The crumbling of male significance is depicted through the exposure of the inner workings of one body. This body does not yet show external signs of decay, but look inside and you will find the “cartilage,” the “discs,” and the “bones” in disarray, deteriorating into their inevitable collapse. Both the bones (stability, strength) and the materials that make bones connect and move effectively (cartilage, discs) are breaking down. This body cannot keep itself upright for much longer. Its posture as well as the morals it stands for, or its “up-righteous[ness],” is bound to bend.

 

Quick look at the final couplet: remember the speaker is talking to men, starting with “you towered for seconds” in the second couplet, continuing to the “Look down” command in the third, and now this: “Wobble across finish lines / and stand on shards.” It’s interesting that men are instructed to wobble but still to cross the finish line, as if saying, go ahead and complete this disappointing journey you’ve taken over the course of the last few millennia – nothing awaits you there except broken pieces to stand on, in place of a red carpet.

 

Where we hope the title may lead us is towards progress, development, and expansion. We’d like to think there’s a lot of “Growing Up” still possible. And we hope such growth can be accomplished in a manner that allows us to build a common “measure”; to no longer be separate.

 
 

– The Editors