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Grief Sequence

Grief Sequence

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Offering a series of poems rooted in the profoundly narrative yet disorienting experience of losing a loved one, Prageeta Sharma, in Grief Sequence, summons all of her resources in order to attempt any semblance, poetic or otherwise, of clear sense in trauma. In doing so she shows that grief, frustrating to logic and yet as real as any experience we might know, is ripe for the sort of intellectual and emotional processing of which poetry is most capable.

ISBN-13: 9781940696881

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Wave Books

Publication Date: 09-17-2019

Pages: 104

Product Dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

Prageeta Sharma is the author of the poetry collections Grief Sequence (Wave Books, 2019), Undergloom (Fence Books, 2013), Infamous Landscapes (Fence Books, 2007), The Opening Question (Fence Books, 2004), which won the 2004 Fence Modern Poets Prize, and Bliss to Fill (Subpress, 2000). She is the founder of the conference Thinking Its Presence: Race, Creative Writing, Literary Studies and Art. A recipient of the 2010 Howard Foundation Award, she has taught at the Universityof Montana and now teaches at Pomona College.

Read an Excerpt

RETURNING TO OUR CREATION MYTH

We were alive in Vinyl Shiraz. Chocolate linen put us into
a desire-haze: a room tone of figure eights and twentyfive-
song cycles. I knew that truth and I had a certain
guarded fullness avow it and a dead emptiness I sealed
in bags.

Your bourbon silhouette is what I now touch the curtains
with, a love in that. Few knew what separated us. I had
no peace. I will say this with an anxiety adjudicated.
Corked in a spill. The wine drunk. A tooth soaring. A back
splintered. A pain patch.

Your vices were hidden in a city-mouse, of those whitewalled
Brooklyn rooms—a serrated-edged life-hole you
painted us—from the illustrious youth-fueled glow I
pulled from scraps and yards: it was a sonic
disappearance. You felt shame, you wrote in 2009. You
could see an eye of mine sink into a furrow before a
stinging temperament blurred our lines of contentment.
I knew it was the stupor of the future as it took its hold in
your body. You never let me diagnose you.

You always diagnosed yourself, and your death was as
sudden as your rage. It rang its own bell to finish. I didn’t
even realize what happened. I was trying my best to
greet your great stride—in its conceit—and stepped
away, just as I wanted you to do in my overreaction to
the subway platform’s creep, but you never did. You
loomed and teetered.

Death stepped too close. You always knew where it was
and how its night could be summoned; thus that night I
didn’t feel your spirit lift. You are still here, in some
reduction of a silence, I think, but I do not know. I drink
whatever raw stillness is left out of the water and grasp
a deep hand heartily.

Table of Contents

Contents

ON SECLUSION AND LOOKING OUT

COMPLICATED SPIRITUAL GRIEF, PART 1

COMPLICATED SPIRITUAL GRIEF, PART 2

A HUMAN WITH FEELINGS

UNDER CLOUDS

SEVENTIES LITE & FOURTEEN JOYS & FOURTEEN FURIES

NOVEMBER 23, 2014

SEQUENCES

SEQUENCE 1

SEQUENCE 2

SEQUENCE 5

SEQUENCE 6

SEQUENCE 7

SEQUENCES WITH TITLES

PETTY SEQUENCES

BETWEEN SIGHS

MY POEM FOR MY STEPDAUGHTER

MY POEM ABOUT LAST SOUNDS

RETURNING TO OUR CREATION MYTH

MY POEM ABOUT FALSE FRIENDS

SETS OF THINGS

I LOOK AT YOUR HANDWRITING

MY SENSORIAL PROSE POEM

MOURNING

MY NATURE POEM

MY POEM ABOUT NEW FRIENDSHIP

GLACIER NATIONAL PARK

GLACIER NATIONAL PARK & THE ELEGY

DREAMING WITHOUT KNOWING

MY POEM IN A POETRY HOLE WITH YOU

I COME SO TOGETHER WHERE YOU ARE

ABIDE

YOU LACK FALSEHOOD

MARCH WIND

YOUR HARD SURFACE LAYER

HERMETIC

SEATTLE SUN

THE FUNNY OPPOSITE

POETRY OBITUARY & NOTES

THE MOON HAS SET: POETRY OBITUARY

LESS MUSIC: NOTES ON POEMS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS