Mercies in the American Desert

Poems

Benjamin Landry

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2021
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9780807175200
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

Reflecting on the Salem witch trials, Puritan minister Cotton Mather cautioned his flock against the moral temptations of the unknown wild, located in what he termed an "American desert." Today, more than three hundred years later, we understand that our troubles have their origins not in some ambiguous beyond; rather, they are of our own making. Benjamin Landry's Mercies in the American Desert attempts a clear-eyed reckoning with the people and the nation we have become: a land assailed by gun violence, police brutality, and state-sanctioned racism. This vivid collection considers a range of bodies encompassing the geographic, the personal, and the political. It locates solace in movement, sound, and observation, as when Pina Bausch heron-dances down a traffic median or when the expansive form of a surfacing manta ray teaches us how to breathe again. Incorporating short bursts of prose poem alongside longer meditations, and working in both alliterative and narrative modes, Mercies in the American Desert conjures a redemptive wilderness for our time.

III

Left in Charge of the Garden

I don’t know what to do

with roses once they go.

I suppose I should read up,

but I like overseeing the denouement

almost as much as the flowering.

If there are a few late petals

holding on, it’s okay to tousle

them like the head of a child.

When the ants catch wind

of this disintegration, they

are jealous, come methodically

running. And I wonder if

their lairs are lined with pink

rose petals like some Victoria’s

Secret grotto, or if they are making

rosewater with their bodies’

enzymes for the queen. Perhaps

this is how roses factor into being

useful, not merely the failed

vocabulary of experiment, the thing

saved between pages or else

pinned to the breast, a dead

idea. Rose in the morning.

Rose from the mourning. Rose

in unison from our open mouths.

At a Remove

Say it’s on principle,

for art. To make

of one’s arms an X,

a technique

of shirt removal.

A strong gust

of the west

precipitates

the thwacks

of broom handles

in garbage-scented

alleys and on

wraparound

porches across

this great

bread basket.

I prefer

the false mountain,

the one comprised

of snakes of color

moving

in the water.

I’d live there

if I could,

instead of

this pile

of failed silos

we’ve set afire.

We should run,

but we like

the heat painting

our faces.

Later, it will hurt

to smile, but we

won’t be smiling,

exactly, a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Satellite
• I.
• II.
• III.
• Acknowledgments