Reading “Fetishes of the Floating World” by Don Domanski

Poetry Lunch S4E11

Reading sections 2 and 3 of “Fetishes of the Floating World” by Don Domanski, Fetishes of the Floating World, Brick Books.

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Last poetry lunch of this season and I suppose it’s fitting to end with the last poem someone wrote — wild to think about and feel the edges unraveling a bit between the here and the wherever-after of a person's life.

I love how these words float while the lines ground them, and their strong movement forward while fighting to be present. I feel that tension in my own life daily, hourly sometimes. How to be here. How to really be, here. The next is always going to be until it isn’t, this is something I know but forget most moments. I'm thankful for this kind of poem to remind me in a deeper way.

The last image of the flames on black water makes me think of my friend Anis Mojgani's poem that opens his book In the Pockets of Small Gods. The scene is dark. Coffins are floating down a river, and they start shouting out to each other in hearty familial fashion. I had the pleasure of getting to hear Anis perform that poem before I read it and I will never forget the startle and comfort I felt at his holler through cupped hands “you know where we are?”

I don’t! I don’t know where we are. But poetry grounds me here. Thanks for your listening to this little series that gets me to read and feel out my feelings about a poem on the spot. It helps me get present with good words and it also helps me know where I’m at. So glad you’re here too, wherever we are.

Cheers!

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Link to purchase

Get the book: Fetishes of the Floating World.