Episode #086 Armor - Sharon Olds

Connor and Jack discuss the Sharon Olds poem "Armor" about an experience she had with her son. Connor mentions the discussion Jo and Amy have about art and power in "Little Women" and Olds' penchant for four beat lines and heavy enjambment. Jack brings up flatworms and both marvel at the way Olds goes so many places from an everyday experience.

Armor

By: Sharon Olds

Just about at the triple-barreled pistol

I can’t go on. I sink down

as if shot, beside the ball of its butt

loaded with mother-of-pearl. My son

leaves me on the bench, and goes on. Hand on

hip, he gazes at a suit of armor,

blue eyes running over the silver,

looking for a slit. He shakes his head,

hair greenish as the gold velvet

cod-shirt hanging before him in volutes

at the metal groin. Next, I see him

facing a case of shields, fingering

the sweater over his heart, and then

for a long time I don’t see him, as a mother will

lose her son in war. I sit

and think about men. Finally Gabriel

comes back, sated, so fattened with gore

his eyelids bulge. We exit under the

huge tumescent jousting irons,

their pennants a faded rose, like the mist

before his eyes. He slips his hand

lightly in mine, and says Not one of those

suits is really safe. But when we

get to the wide museum steps

railed with gold like the descent from heaven,

he can’t resist,

and before my eyes, down the stairs,

over and over, clutching his delicate

unprotected chest, Gabriel

dies, and dies.

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