Big Frank has been reading a very good American poet: Mary Jo Bang. She has a poem below on desire. As Paul Simon wrote "The open palm of desire/ wants everything/ wants everything". The way it gets it is through, as Bang writes, "the hard wire argument given to the mind's unstoppable mouth." This is what Big Frank calls The Voice. Bang's title, "Definitely", hits the assurance with which the argument is presented. It comes from her most recent collection of poetry, Elegy, written after the death of her only son from an overdose of prescription drugs. It was the winner of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry.
Definitely
What is desireBut the hardwire argument given
To the mind's unstoppable mouth.
Inside the braincase, it's I
Want that fills every blank.
And then the hand
Reaches for the pleasure
The plastic snake offers. Someone says, Yes,
It will all be fine in some future soon.
Definitely. I've conjured a body
In the chair before me. Be yourself, I tell it.
Here memory makes you
Unchangeable: that shirt, those summer pants.
That beautiful face.
That tragic beautiful mind.
That mind's ravenous mouth
That told you, This isn't poison
At all but just what the machine needs. And then,
The mouth closes on its hunger.
The heart stops.
---- Mary Jo Bang
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