Brenda Hillman
Brenda Hillman’s eleventh collection from Wesleyan University Press, In a Few Minutes Before Later, was published in 2023. Hillman has edited and co-translated over twenty books and has recently received the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award for innovative writing. A former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and the Poetry Director at Community of Writers, Hillman lives in the San Francisco Bay Area where she is Professor Emerita at Saint Mary’s College of California.
1957
(after Isaiah, chapter 6) In the year that the President Eisenhower with his egghead did not die
& was reelected
& certain guided missiles were made available unto him, we saw a great being sitting on a chair, not a throne,
he sat him there, in a padded chair
& above it stood the seraphim though they might have been
termites with 2 pairs of wings,
with two they covered his face, with two they covered the feet & they did fly.
Not much difference between seraphim or termites or any other type
of winged them for that matter at a time
when the anxious mother saved bits of string, tied them together & labeled them in jars, preparing for the day
when the lord would come, that indeed there would surely
be enough string for the lord;
& the voices of Isoptera & Ensifera & seraphim spoke with radiant energy,
with one voice they cried to the Encyclopedia Britannica, with one voice
we knew Monaco had become a kingdom,
with one voice we knew safeguards
had been put in place for the Voting Rights Act, Sputnik
had been launched & orbited the earth every hour & a half
carrying a live dog. (What was the live dog thinking? Can you even imagine?)
It was an impossible year to drink from the meaning cup
& species said learn our names learn our names,,,, replicate us
in your punctuation life forms>><< so at the end of time
when you are gone, little human girl,
little child with your
blue itchy church dress & patent leather shoes,
reading the book of Keats on your stomach on the bed
in the summer (Keats was a boy who died young)
they can hear under the earth where the sound comes from—;
& the posts of the door were planed & sprayed for termites &
something said woe is us woe is us for we too
will someday be undone at the drive-in,
for our eyes hath seen the lord, hath seen the Rock Hudson
& the Doris Day,
& the members of the legume family being introduced
in western soil in soil stolen
from those who were there,
caliche soil, clay soil, in awe of
grasshoppers hissing, grasshoppers sewing the great worry
of the lord, the worry of the mother who said what on earth
do we have here seeing mice shit in the cereal cabinet,
who on earth will clean this with me,
who is going to do all the work around here,
& with one voice the seraphim though they might have been bugs
did say unto her or air, here i also am, a girl, send me.