Leveler Poetry Journal
About Leveler Submission Guidelines More Poems

Interview


Have you eaten?

Yes, of the roots.


But is the body not now dying?

Inasmuch as it was a fire.


Beforehand?

The beginning is bitten.


And what is an apple, then?

Outside the lines, uncooperative child.


Who holds the pencil?

God holds the pencil.


What do you hold to be true?

Not every creature yawns when I yawn.


Are you tired?

The volcano nods before it rises.


Have you seen a crater lake?

Carbonation belches unholy in a field of dead cattle.

It casts a withering net.


And who is there with you?

I can’t turn my head. I have

no concept of restraint.


Then what’s straight ahead?

An ember breathed into, the flicker

immaterial, it could be a fruit

or fist, the boiling crawl of veins.


Are you a child? A hungry child?

My mouth is a nest

you fail to thicken.


To a state of belief?

Not even when I’ve laid my hands

to rest on your throat.


You seem unsettled.

But every brain’s in chambers.

Even the brain of disaster.


You seem very unsettled.

In my brain a black-eyed deer

gnaws at the staples in a telephone pole.


Do you dream of blue light?

Do you carry my voice in your hair?




Dan Rosenberg

levelheaded: Interview


Early on, it seems like this “Interview” occurs between two people. In a series of seven consecutive couplets, one voice asks the questions, another answers. But a closer look at the connections between these lines confirms the obvious—that despite its shifting pronouns, the poem is the product of a single consciousness.


The first question, “Have you eaten?” is answered, “Yes, of the roots.” The roots, symbolic of life, propels us to the word “dying” in question two. The word “bitten” begets an apple a line later. The word “lines” yields “pencil.” That “God holds the pencil” leads to the question, “What do you hold to be true?”


Okay, there are traceable thoughts—but so what? Well, if the poem is simply a conversation, it’s one in which the answers aren’t always direct responses to the questions that precede them. The asker seems less interested in each entire response, instead fixating on a single word or phrase that feed into what he or she will ask next. Perhaps this poem is a commentary on our inability to communicate effectively. More likely, it may be an attempt to unify a divided self in world of inherent contrasts.


As noted, this is a poem built on associations. “The volcano nods before it rises” then dips into the question “Have you seen a crater lake?” As humans, we navigate through a world of mountains and caverns, of magma and water. Which we’ll come upon is happenstance: “it could be a fruit / or a fist.” The poet, like the speaker (singular!) of “Interview,” is a searcher, a truth seeker asking and attempting answers. He finds connections between things, but most things aren’t completely explainable.


So it goes, friends, with the task of trying to decode what Rosenberg has given us. Try extrapolating meaning from “In my brain a black-eyed deer / gnaws at the staples in a telephone pole.” Maybe this is another example of constant conflict, the animal self uneasy in an urban landscape. The speechless arrives at a launch pad for communication, only to leave with more questions.



– The Editors