"To An Absence" by Brian Brodeur

Content Warning: Abortion, dead fetuses

Mea culpa: Ugh, I should've said "volta italiana." What a philistine I am. 

Topics discussed in this episode include: 

-Lake View Cemetery and the Haserot Angel 

-Getting called out from beyond the grave

-Come see me read!  

-Brian Brodeur!  

-My Great-Uncle, Elton Glaser 

-Buy Brian's latest book: Some Problems With Autobiography 

-Wins and almost-wins in The Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Contest. 

-Yet more ways to make formal poems sound contemporary 

-The art of rhymes that don't rhyme 

-Another hybrid sonnet? 

-The triumphant return of the pyrrhic-spondee. 

-When Facebook stalking is part of podcast research

-Radford's Meat Market is real. 

-The dark truth by which we see

-The haunting of Brian Brodeur

-Is guilt itself a crime?

-Displacement Activity 

-Verbal dentistry

-How joy is deepened by suffering

-A dripping bag of redemption 

Text of poem:

To An Absence

The kid in latex gloves at Radford’s beef

brown-bags my five-pound brisket, saying, “Dude,

have a blessed day.” I do the math—you’d be

a teenager, his age. Across the counter,

the brisket drips (the kid grinning, “My bad”),

but all I feel for you is gratitude

for the life your death allowed—my wife and daughter

I’d like one day to see I might deserve. 

And would deserve, I think, if I could live

without the guilt I tongue like a decayed

incisor I’ve refused to have removed—

afraid what joy I’ve known might disappear 

without a counter-pain to root it here. 

The kid says, “Wait,” and stamps my brisket PAID.