A poem from BLOOD DAZZLER by PATRICIA SMITH

JOHN BLOOMBERG-RISSMAN Reviews

“Voodoo VIII: Spiritual Cleansing and Blessing” in Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith

(Coffee House Press, Minneapolis, 2008)

Voodoo VIII:

Spiritual Cleansing and Blessing

There's no deception like the world after rain.
Suddenly God is everywhere,
winking from dumpster rivers,
using the insistent perfume of plain water
to scrape funk from alleyways and men.
In the seconds after storm,
we sign on for brash little resurrections.
We lose those ten pesky pounds,
resolve to enthusiastically fuck dim spouses,
stop reaching across breakfast tables
to slap our children into silence.
We straighten framed blacklight squares
of The Last Supper, musing upon the wide
sad eyes of wept clarity and looming doom.
And we are comforted until the sun
blazes the stench forward, rebirthing rot
and workdays. Then His eyes are dry,
threaded with lightning and hurt,
and we are reminded, again,
just what He’s capable of.

*

Anybody remember Hurricane Katrina? That seems so long ago now … which is ridiculous. I don’t know whether to blame it on news cycles, economic cycles, my own physical distance from New Orleans … but that wrecked city is in the news again, as the home of the NCAA Men’s Championship Game, which will be on at 6 PM this evening (the evening of the day I write this). All that we see on TV are revelers on Bourbon Street and shrieking fans No signs of devastation anywhere. Of course, the cameras don’t go everywhere …

Which is why this book, which focuses on “A storm’s-eye view of the devastation that forever changed New Orleans and America” (or so it seemed in 08, when it was published) comes as a nice little reality check. Reality is a funny notion, isn’t it? The year this book was published is the year the world capitalist economy collapsed. Which makes this book seem positively ante-diluvian (yes, yes … )

Which is why I chose the last poem rather than the first. What I wanted to see was where this book dropped me as it came to an end.

“Voodoo VIII: Spiritual Cleansing and Blessing”. It seems from the title that we are about to perform a ritual, which will put Katrina in the past. Not in the sense referred to above, but in some real (non news-cycle) sense. 

“There's no deception like the world after rain.” We are quickly disabused of that notion. It is only a deception. This isn’t only true after an event like Katrina. It’s true every time it rains a good rain. We somehow feel that we can now make a new beginning. How many times have we fallen for this deception?

“Suddenly God is everywhere, / winking from dumpster rivers, / using the insistent perfume of plain water / to scrape funk from alleyways and men.” It is almost (almost?) as if the rain is a kind of baptism.

“In the seconds after storm, / we sign on for brash little resurrections. / We lose those ten pesky pounds, / resolve to enthusiastically fuck dim spouses, / stop reaching across breakfast tables / to slap our children into silence.” If not a baptism, a resurrection, which are not that different, except that after the first we take on our (cleansed) humanity, after the second our godhead. But any pretensions to big-g godhead are quickly undercut as we understand what is meant by describing our resurrections as brash and little. All our newfound godliness is strictly domestic, just turning us into vaguely decent humans.

But that’s not nothing, is it? Really, for what more could we ask? Pace the 10 pounds and unhappy marriages, a vague decency would me an immeasurably great improvement.

We straighten framed blacklight squares / of The Last Supper, musing upon the wide / sad eyes of wept clarity and looming doom.” Whose doom? Christ’s of course. But we must recall, there is some deception going on. It’s been there from the first. I begin to think that the deception is twofold. First it’s a self-deception. After the rain, our lives do NOT start again. Secondly, we are deceived by God. No, by our perception of God as somehow loving and beneficent. The doom could be His, or ours.

I think the blacklight supper is a magnificent touch. Yes, a blacklight last supper is like a velvet Elvis, a kind of ne plus ultra of tackiness. I don’t think I need to go all Montevidayan to suggest that that would be to an incomplete reading at best. There is absolutely no difference between Chartres Cathedral and these images. Deception – and hope – is just as real, just the same, for all people, regardless of social class.

“And we are comforted until the sun / blazes the stench forward, rebirthing rot and workdays.” The rain dries, the hope for a new beginning evaporates; and we are back where we began. Note the stench and rot here, and the earlier funk, on the alleyways and men. The funk of living, whether thru Katrina, or thru the more normal everyday, is back.  

“Then His eyes are dry, / threaded with lightning and hurt, / and we are reminded, again, / just what He’s capable of.” Some God of love, eh? This dry-eyed God is strictly Old Testament. Or even older than that. “ … and we are reminded, again, / just what He’s capable of.” And what, exactly, is that? Katrina, of course. But what’s more, and perhaps even worse, the daily holocaust. But let’s stick to Katrina a minute. Remember Noah’s flood, and the rainbow promise (Genesis 9: 8-17 [NIV])?

⁸ Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: ⁹ “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you ¹⁰ and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. ¹¹ I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

¹² And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: ¹³ I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. ¹⁴ Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, ¹⁵ I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. ¹⁶ Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”

¹⁷ So God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.”

While I, personally, think the destruction of the wetlands, the anti-tax movement that kept the Army Corps of Engineers from maintaining the levees, climate change, failures of other governmental infrastructure, etc were more to blame for the disaster than any deity, I might go so far as to suggest that I understand how someone who is a believer who has experienced Katrina might respond as this poem does, with a somewhat qualified: Bullshit.

*****

[Editor’s Note: This is one of 50 reviews written, mas o menos, in 50 days.  While each engagement can be read on a stand-alone basis, there’s a layer of watching the critic’s subjectivity arise in a fulsome manner if the reviews are read one after another.  So if you have insomnia and/or are curious about this layer, I suggest you read the 50 reviews right after each other and, to facilitate this type of reading, I will put at the bottom of each review a “NEXT” button that will take you to the next review.  To wit: NEXT.  And an Afterword on John's reading process is also available HERE!]

John Bloomberg-Rissman is somewhere towards middle of In the House of the Hangman, the third section of his maybe life project called Zeitgeist Spam (picture Hannah Hoch painting over the Sistine Chapel) The first two volumes have been published: No Sounds of My Own Making, and Flux, Clot & Froth. In addition to his Zeitgeist Spam project, he has edited or co-edited two anthologies, 1000 Views of 'Girl Singing' and The Chained Hay(na)ku Project, and is at work on a third, which he is editing with Jerome Rothenberg. He is also deep into two important collaborations, one with Richard Lopez, one with Anne Gorrick. By important he means "important to him". Anyone else want to collaborate? He blogs at Zeitgeist Spam.