Monday Poems: "Pantoum" -- by Sasha Steensen

Perhaps the universe is an extinguished building

with blue banners strung along

and the forest, more like a commodity

bordering bushes and asphalt,

something else to string our blue banners on.

Never was restoration swifter:

the leafless trees, the asphalt

less splintered and more splendid.

Never was restoration swifter

with its mightier solutions,

less splintered and more splendid

snipers, dynamiters, colorful bombs.

We please ourselves with mightier solutions,

picnics under blue spruces

snipers, dynamiters, colorful bombs

the guardians of what we might call “home rights.”

At picnics, under blue spruces

we clamor after the news

and its employees, the guardians of “home rights”

“the media” mustering “one mind.”

It’s news,

the decision to nobly save rather than meanly lose

some pretense of mustering “one mind”

secures its truth.

The decision to nobly save rather than meanly lose

our flag

secures its truth

as a squirrel secures its nuts by hiding them in the ground.

Our flag—

a souvenir of having been here before

a squirrel’s nuts, deep in the ground.

But travel, travail, and The Method’s mistakes

all souvenirs of having been here before,

haunt us and taunt us and call us names.

But travail, travel, and Method’s mistakes

mark a different season, nuts rotting, bulbs blooming.

Each season haunts us and taunts us and calls us names

until finally the universe is an extinguished building,

a different season, nuts rotting, bulbs blooming

and the forest, a commodity.

*     *     *     *     *

Sasha Steensen is the author of several collections of poetry, including the forthcoming House of Deer (2013), A Magic Book (2004), which won the Alberta DuPont Bonsal Prize, and The Method (2008), in which the above poem appears. 

Steenson grew up in Las Vegas and is now a professor at Colorado State University, where she is also co-editor of Bonfire Press.