This June 2021, guest editor Lane Henson features 4 of Duluth Minnesota’s many fine poets.
***CONTENT ADVISORY NOTE—at the bottom of this page in the poet’s bio, this post contains a word some people consider “profane.” Please use your voluntary decision-making power to prepare yourself to read or to decide not to read that portion of this week’s Sunday Morning Lyricality.
Bob Monahan’s You did it, Frank is a poem filled with sharp metaphors spoken softly. The contemplative nature of this piece invites the reader into the poet’s process as they struggle with the “quivering quill” of fierce inspiration and the sometimes inevitable one-that-gets-away. This poem’s ending moved me deeply.
Lane Henson
You did it, Frank
……………–after Frank Stanford
by Bob Monahan
You made my quill quiver with might,
made me want to fight with words,
stole my innocence again,
flipped on the search lights,
and now I forget why.
Is it because this weeding of endless garden
has devolved into impassioned, slow-core grinding
with the thing I want more than anything?
But this is not how you make butter.
The churning, yes, but it’s much more deliberate.
Last night- and for a moment this morning-
I was afraid.
Not of persecution.
Oh, it’s all persecution with fear, friend.
Not of losing you in a field of daisies.
We are both daisies, it turns out.
Not of losing control or influence…
Letting it all go, as we speak.
Like when you set the hook in the Big One
And instead of reeling her in,
You drop the rod
*splooshh*
and watch it descend into the murky silence,
and with a pure heart you simply say
“Take it.”
***
Bob Monahan is a writer of poems from Duluth, MN.
He believes himself to be mostly human.
Whatever it is that life has to offer him, he is here for it.
When faced with an important decision, the only answer he trusts is “Fuck yes!”
“You did it, Frank” by Bob Monahan appears here with permission of the author.