American Sentences, and: Coup-Contrecoup
- American Sentences, and: Coup-Contrecoup
American Sentences
I went first into the darkness to see what stars in this landlocked statelooked like from an Adirondack incline. A goblet of whateverwine stalked alongside, then its tumbler: following to aid my eye inthe eyeing of the spectacle. He had the goggles and so beheldat his red dirt's edge his pointer finger, each constellation's limitelided with another's as he slurred. The lights in his assemblingtwisted whale, crow, queen, even the crane to rat to rat to rat to rat—mischief above and colony below. As you would know, he to me
turned. The screen door rasped behind us, so I made to move and moved once more—once more into view. The others emptied from the kitchen and, underthe decorative illumination of the porch, made clear conversation.All of us now, but none to vouch as he angled, I know yourhomeland's run with them, into my remembering ear. Was it overrunwith? Or was it ruined with? My memory has clotted the ire.
Who's to say now if it was Get out of this country or Get the fuckout of this country that he hitched an octave higher, yet no one heard. [End Page 142]
Coup-Contrecoup
I was at a low ebb when the ambulancereversed along the gravel and the roartraveled to Janine. For days the churnedrocks looped their sound until her brainfelt like the surf and the familiarity lulledher to sleep. Lulled her in the hospital'smachines, lulled her in the backyardof her father's home where she swayedin suspension like the empty hammockat first, then thrashed in the galelike Odysseus lashed to the mass of me.She could not tell you where I was thoughthe depths were in her. Wailing whereI waited were the sirens skirting the corner,the vehicle still leagues away from rescue. [End Page 143]
Janine Joseph is a poet, librettist, and essayist born in the Philippines. She is the author of Driving Without a License, winner of the Kundiman Poetry Prize and da Vinci Eye award. Her writing has appeared in or is forthcoming from The Atlantic, The Georgia Review, Orion Magazine, Copper Nickel, World Literature Today, The Poem's Country: Place & Poetic Practice, the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day series, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of fellowships and scholarships from the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, Kundiman, Sewanee Writers' Conference, Bethany Arts Community, Vermont Studio Center, and MacDowell Colony. A co-organizer for Undocupoets, Janine is an assistant professor of poetry at Oklahoma State University.
