Geocentric

Pattiann Rogers

Indecent, self-soiled, bilious
reek of turnip and toadstool
decay, dribbling the black oil
of wilted succulents, the brown
fester of rotting orchids,
in plain view, that stain
of stinkhorn down your front,
that leaking roil of bracket
fungi down your back, you
purple-haired, grainy-fuzzed
smolder of refuse, fathering
fumes and boils and powdery
mildews, enduring the constant
interruption of sink-mire
flatulence, contagious
with ear wax, corn smut,
blister rust, backwash
and graveyard debris, rich
with manure bog and dry-rot
harboring not only egg-addled
garbage and wrinkled lip
of orange-peel mold but also
the clotted breath of overripe
radish and burnt leek, bearing
every dank, malodorous rut
and scarp, all sulphur fissures
and fetid hillside seepages, old,
old dependable, engendering
forever the stench and stretch
and warm seethe of inevitable
putrefaction, nobody
loves you as I do.

About The Author

When I first read Pattiann Rogers’ poem, “Geocentric” I felt a sense of what Bill Christopersen was pointing to when he classified Rogers among the “’poets for whom there seems to exist no evil, much less anything to confess. … They greet autobiographical materials, as well as the human predicament, frankly and movingly, but without ostentation or obsession,’” Poetry Foundation, poetryfoundation.org, 11.03.2023.

In Rogers’ work — particularly, “Geocentric” and “By Death” — I felt I’d encountered someone who related to both the earth and human embodiment in way that felt familiar to me. It was my body in relation to Earth body where I felt truest, most free, unpopulated by limiting identities and stories — mine or others’ — and Pattiann Rogers somehow got all that into language for me. She stayed elemental and deeply honest with her words, reflecting something of the transcendental.

Geocentric

About The Author

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