"Where I'm Calling From"

30 May 2022: Listened to this episode of The New Yorker Fiction Podcast today while collecting and printing sources for my next two entries. Sherman Alexie (who I guess is quietly back after his scandals?) reads Raymond Carver's "Where I'm Calling From." What an interesting story: engrossing, funny, sad, with memorable characters. Structurally, it's fun, too, with a first-person narrator who gives a lot of space to another character's words. It moves between present and the pasts of multiple characters at multiple points. But you can always follow it (even if you are only paying half-attention at moments as you, for example, print off pdf after pdf...). It ends with hope with hopelessness lurking on the margins, entirely appropriate for a story about addiction and getting sober. 

"Grief Calls Us to the Things of This World"

30 November 2016: I know I've been posting lots of poems as my "good things," but what can I say? I keep finding these gems.

Today's comes from Sherman Alexie. This poem says really simply something that I haven't had words for before--encapsulated first by its title. The parts of grief that can ache so much are those parts tied to material, sensory objects and memories. And it sneaks up on us when we have forgotten for a moment those we have lost. And memory is both a blessing and a burden.

"Grief Calls Us to the Things of This World"
By Sherman Alexie
 

The morning air is all awash with angels—Richard Wilbur, “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World”

 

The eyes open to a blue telephone

In the bathroom of this five-star hotel.

I wonder whom I should call? A plumber,

Proctologist, urologist, or priest?

Who is blessed among us and most deserves

The first call? I choose my father because

He’s astounded by bathroom telephones.

I dial home. My mother answers. “Hey, Ma,”

I say, “Can I talk to Poppa?” She gasps,

And then I remember that my father

Has been dead for nearly a year. “Shit, Mom,”

I say. “I forgot he’s dead. I’m sorry—

How did I forget?” “It’s okay,” she says.

“I made him a cup of instant coffee

This morning and left it on the table—

Like I have for, what, twenty-seven years—

And I didn’t realize my mistake

Until this afternoon.” My mother laughs

At the angels who wait for us to pause

During the most ordinary of days

And sing our praise to forgetfulness

Before they slap our souls with their cold wings.

Those angels burden and unbalance us.

Those fucking angels ride us piggyback.

Those angels, forever falling, snare us

And haul us, prey and praying, into dust.