Both poetry and psychoanalysis exist as locations for discovery. We may wonder: is there ever discovery without uncovering; uncovering without discovering something new? Consider the elements of both in the following poems:
Facing It
Yusef Komunyakaa
My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn’t,
dammit: No tears.
I’m stone. I’m flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way—the stone lets me go.
I turn that way—I’m inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap’s white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman’s blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird’s
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet’s image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I’m a window.
He’s lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she’s brushing a boy’s hair.
Unbidden
Rae Armantrout
The ghosts swarm.
They speak as one
person. Each
has left something
undone.
.
Did the palo verde
blush yellow
all at once?
Today’s edges
are so sharp
they might cut
anything that moved.
.
The way a lost
word
will come back
unbidden.
You’re not interested
in it now,
only
in knowing
where it’s been.
