Parable
The third grade was the golden hour
barely prelapsarian, a paradox a paradise
a garden.
Just take a look around the room:
a chrysalis a hanging jewel
hermit crabs in a saltwater tub
and cups in a row on the window ledge—
each bears a seed and a name,
a seed inscribed to each our own,
a name-flag staked in soil.
My name is next to Conrad’s on the end.
In class we’ve copied fancy terms
like “embryo” and “endosperm”
and “cotyledon”
(precognitions of the fall,
the writing on the classroom wall)
and now we wait, to see the words made flesh
for growthquakes stirring striving blind
for pricks of green to
perforate the light.
I know it right away: my seed’s a dud.
It never lived at all or else it died–
(I panic at what is implied,
I a girl, already on thin ice,
a weird marked girl I cannot let them see
the damning allegation
that botany has pinned on me)
The seed is dead, the only one and mine.
I know before they know, so there is time.
Beginning to lapse perhaps, I swap the cups.
Laconic Conrad he can take the hit
the singular germinal failure
a solid lad, his future won’t be
wracked or wrecked by metaphor.
One week on each cup but his
has sprung a little life
and Conrad gives a sheepish shrug
and no suspicions fall on me,
I’ve lived another set of days unseen:
my changeling seed’s a sinning winner
sprouted viable and green.
This should be the turning point where
punishment rains down on me
(I know how the stories of bad children go)
For weeks I anticipate the blunt-edged blow
in moral quease, in fetal coil
but miracle, my unfound outness holds
my desk, my domicile passed over.
Slow at first I test the soil, unfurl extend a tendril
I grow bold.
After the fall the elders convene
to judge us, sift us, as they must. Of me:
“she’s really opened up this year,
blossomed, so to speak.”
It’s true. In months to come I’m named
queen of the jitterbug
spelling bee champ
heiress ascendant one of the chosen from
generation to generation
rushing headlong gleeful from the garden
my pockets full of stolen seeds.
Alana Murphy |
levelheaded: Parable
The first stanza of Alana Murphy’s “Parable” tells us what we can expect from the poem as a whole. As the speaker begins to reflect on what life was like as a third grader—“barely prelapsarian, a paradox a paradise / a garden”—the poet’s modus operandi is made apparent. Murphy revels in the sounds of words. She will examine the past, and reconstruct it, while taking pleasure in the musicality of language.
The punchy alliteration (p, p, p!) and subtle slant rhyme (prelapsarian/garden) of that first stanza also add up to a sensible sentence. We can take some guesses as to how third grade might mark the soon-to-be end of innocence. As the poem progresses, we continue to learn about specific ways third grade is pretty damn intense.
The speaker begins to learn the demands of ownership (“a seed inscribed to each our own, / a name-flag staked in soil”). She finds out how having anything (a self, a seed) occurs within a world co-inhabited by others (“My name is next to Conrad’s on the end”). She learns the language of plant reproduction while “wait[ing], to see the words made flesh.”
With the fourth stanza, riding upon the sonic acrobatics of “stirring, striving blind” lines, Murphy tumbles into what is at once the poem’s funniest and most tender moment: “I know it right away: my seed’s a dud.” Here, the lack of overt sound similarities lends extra weight to the line. The poor kid, certain her seed won’t grow, swaps experiments with her classmate, Conrad. As she predicted, or as luck, fate, God, karma, the cosmos—whatever—would have it, the speaker’s new seed germinates and the one she left for Conrad won’t grow.
Parables, by definition, impart a moral. One of the many things we like about this poem is that we can’t be entirely sure what its moral is. Maybe the takeaway is that the world isn’t fair. Or, maybe the poem’s telling us not to be satisfied with the hand we’re dealt, but to take action and make the change we want to see. Maybe we’re to remember that there’s a bit of fun to be had in doing something naughty, or that eventually people grow to become their true selves. One thing’s for sure, there are actions and reactions and reactions to reactions. Language and life unspooling.
– The Editors