Episode #060 The Moment I Saw A Pelican Devour - Paige Lewis

Connor and Jack explore this poem by Paige Lewis, author of the forthcoming (and hotly anticipated) collection Space Struck, which will publish in October 2019. They explore some of the poem's "zinger" lines, and entangle themselves in its intoxicating web of religion, labor history, medicine, and (insidious?) miracles.

Read the poem below.

Preorder Space Struck: http://www.sarabandebooks.org/titles-20192039/space-struck-paige-lewis

More about Paige Lewis, here: http://paigelewispoetry.com/About

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The Moment I Saw a Pelican Devour

a seagull—wings swallow wings—I learned

that a miracle is anything that God forgot

to forbid. So when you tell me that saints

are splintered into bone bits smaller than

the freckles on your wrist and that each speck

is sold to the rich, I know to marvel at this

and not the fact that these same saints are still

wholly intact and fresh-faced in their Plexiglas

tomb displays. We holy our own fragments

when we can—trepanation patients wear their

skull spirals as amulets, mothers frame the dried

foreskin of their firstborn, and I’ve seen you

swirl my name on your tongue like a thirst pebble.

Still, I try to hold on to nothing for fear of being

crushed by what can be taken because sometimes

not even our mouths belong to us. Listen, in

the early 1920s, women were paid to paint radium

onto watch dials so that men wouldn’t have to ask

the time in dark alleys. They were told it was safe,

told to lick their brushes into sharp points. These

women painted their nails, their faces, and judged

whose skin shined brightest, they coated their

teeth so their boyfriends could see their bites

with the lights turned down. The miracle here

is not that these women swallowed light. It’s that,

when their skin dissolved and their jaws fell off,

the Radium Corporation claimed they all died

from syphilis. It’s that you’re more interested in

telling me about the dull slivers of dead saints, while

these women’s bones are glowing beneath our feet.