Ember Babiak

I’ve long admired the oft-anthologized “Atomic Pantoum,” by Peter Meinke, who taught me poetry and mentored me through my time at Eckerd College, where I got my BA in Creative Writing at the writing workshop there (at the time, the only undergraduate workshop in the country). I like it so much I sought permission from his press to republish it when I was serving as Literary Editor for Quarterly Journal of Ideology: A Critique of Conventional Wisdom. (Alas, that was so long ago that even the archive isn’t available, and sadly, the photo of the archive at Poetry’s website is incomplete. Hunt down the poem, if you can. Or maybe I’ll make a video of me reading it, if someone asks me to.)

If I had the opportunity to mandate that everyone seeking power had to learn by heart five poems so as to better fulfill the responsibilities that come with that power (Jesus Mary and Joseph haven’t these people even seen Spider-Man?), it would be among those poems.

I’ve played with a lot of forms, but though I’ve attempted the pantoum in the past, I never felt I’d managed one (Peter sets a high bar).

One of the things I love about form is the way it can help the poet handle stuff that otherwise might be too hot. When something makes me want to scream or weep on the page (leaving the reader feeling like their head hurts or they’ve been left rather damp and snot-smeared), the requirements of the form force me to cool it, to temper it, to fold and hammer it into something that might cut to the bone.

So when the resident madman in the Oval Office (which must reek of gold spray paint and adhesive, egads…well, I hear those would be the least offensive odors one might be forced to endure there, but anyway) launched his illegal war a month ago, I decided to take up the tongs of this incredible form again and see what I could do with the overwhelming emotions that my empathy for the people of Iran, and indeed all the world, being terrorized by this old pedophile in his desperate attempt to escape the justice that he knows is coming, was causing to short-circuit my nervous system. I’ll be performing this at the Savage Club this Sunday, so I’ve been practicing. And it will be part of my set at the Punk and Poetry festival next month.

If anyone knows what happened to the terrified man and his little dog that first day of bombing in Tehran, I’d love to know. I’m hoping they’re both somewhere safe now, but I’m not sure where that could possibly be in this moment.