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 Contents | September 2003 More on poetry from The Atlantic Monthly. Also by Stanley Plumly: The Marriage in the Trees (1996) Naps (1998) Piano (1999) Strays (2000) John 6:17 (2001) Mercy (2002) |
Silent Heart Attack
by Stanley Plumly .....  Hear the author read this poem (in RealAudio)When silence is another kind of violence. Like all the breath you've ever breathed suddenly swallowed. But since it happened over days, each night a little worse, it lacked the drama of my father's death. He went down, like a building, on his knees. I sat in the dark inside the feeling I was turning into stone, or, if I turned around, to salt, salt-crystals diamonding the blackouts. Silence is what you hear, the mouth a moon of Os, black filling up the body with its blood. I listened. Each night, all night, my father louder.
Stanley Plumly is a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland. A collection of his critical essays, Argument and Song, will be published this month. Copyright © 2003 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved. The Atlantic Monthly; September 2003; Silent Heart Attack; Volume 292, No. 2; 116. | [an error occurred while processing this directive] | ||
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