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  • Lying Awake
  • Michael Waters (bio)

Talkin’ bout my g-g-generation

—The Who

The fan makes a tsking noise, like a clock’s, Only faster. Again I lie awake— Many years pass in the hours of one night, Each replete with its routine tragedies (Loss of parents, divorce, slipped vertebrae). In 1960, for the spring pageant, My male classmates and I clamored to be St. Francis of Assisi, arms outstretched, Less failed scarecrow than living crucifix Bearing its worshipful burden of birds, Or the once-dead Christ who woke that Sunday To find no one keeping vigil, no one— So, to amuse Himself, He spooked a few Apostles, gazed once more upon His flesh, Then rose, bidding only the birds goodbye, The birds that, generations later, pecked Crumbs from the folds of St. Francis’s robe. Goodbye, the ceiling fan seems to echo With its next lopsided revolution, Like this lapsed Catholicism leading Nowhere.

Across America I hear The stuttered breaths of my generation, Of those who lie awake, alone, even With one more insomniac lying close, Lucky enough to have suffered only Those common misfortunes of our own tribe’s Devising, so shut up please for Christ’s sake (Try for one night not to think of horrors— Our cities on fire, My Lai, the Towers, [End Page 129] All our inherited atrocities— Forget Mary Turner eight months pregnant Strung by her feet in Valdosta Georgia Soaked with kerosene ignited a torch— Witnessing swamp candles dimmed their phosphor— Belly slit open the wound in her side Her body riddled with bullets with jeers Spilled Jesus stamped into mud by boot soles) Shut up and go back to sleep’s hard labor In the whir and whap of blades thudding air Their rhythmic recital their unceasing Keening righteous whimper abandoned prayer

Come kingdom come kingdom come kingdom comeNow and at the hour of our death Amen

Michael Waters

Michael Waters’s recent books include Darling Vulgarity (a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize) and Parthenopi: New and Selected Poems, both from BOA Editions, as well as the new edition of Contemporary American Poetry from Houghton Mifflin.

“While I may resent my mother for birthing me in late 1949 rather than in early 1950, making me seem older than I really am, I know my life truly began the first time I heard Little Richard sing ‘Womp-bomp-a-loom-op-a-womp-bam-boom!’ I have been trying to make my own lines as memorable, syllable by syllable.”

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