BABE THE PIG DOES THE SHEEP-NOISE WHEN MOURNING THE SHEEP by sam sax
BABE THE PIG DOES THE SHEEP-NOISE WHEN MOURNING THE SHEEP
sam saxgrief is an animal. we all know that. but which animal
exactly? what kingdom, what family, is it ever a fish?does its voice change as it leaves the body or is there
a bestiary somewhere in the chest?great bone ark that crates and creates each heaving
lamentation. remakes the grieved thing as noise.at the televised funeral the ingenue performs the gone
singer’s living song & for a moment is overtakenslow howl opening the cage of her mouth. when X
died i made sounds i haven’t made since.it came into me as a wind. it rode me as wind
MARGINALIA
1.
The day my grandfather died what came out of me wasn’t recognisable. Was it grief? It didn’t sound like anything I’d ever made with my body before. I remember being in a room full of people and hearing myself make that sound.
2.
I don’t always believe the things I feel belong to me. Sometimes the emotion feels borrowed. Or maybe ancestral. As if someone else’s pain is moving through me, using my mouth as a temporary home, asking to be heard one more time before it disappears again.
3.
There is a part of grief that refuses to stay inside language. It presses against the body instead. I’ve felt it in the back of my throat, in the muscles behind my eyes, in the breath that won’t come all the way in. When I’ve tried to speak it, I’ve only ever come close. The words miss. The sound gets closer.
4.
It matters less now what the grief was about. It has changed shape too many times. What I remember is the way it entered—without permission, without name.
5.
I wonder sometimes what parts of me were made from mourning, and if anything else could have shaped them as clearly.
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SHARED WITH GRATITUDE
This poem appeared in Granta, Online Edition, 2021.
DESCRIPTION
“Granta magazine and Granta Books share a remit to discover and publish the best in new literary fiction, memoir, reportage and poetry from around the world.
The magazine was founded in 1889 by students at Cambridge University as The Granta, a periodical of student politics, badinage and literary enterprise, named after the river that runs through the town. In this original incarnation it published the work of writers like A.A. Milne, Michael Frayn, Stevie Smith, Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath.” (Source)
ABOUT SAM SAX
sam sax is a queer, jewish, writer and educator. They’re the author of Yr Dead, Longlisted for The National Book Award, and PIG, named one of the best books of 2023 by New York Magazine and Electric Lit. They’re also the author of Madness, winner of The National Poetry Series and Bury It, winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. They’re the two-time Bay Area Grand Slam Champion with poems published in The New York Times, The Atlantic,… (more)
ENDNOTES
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