Reflections on the First Week, pt. 2.

"You know the way Jesus/ rips open his shirt/to show us his heart, all flaming and thorny"

NICK FLYNN 

Massachusetts born with a stint at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and a graduate degree from NYU, he writes in all the right publications and when he isn't teaching at the University of Houston he is "elsewhere."

The above quote does not come from the two poems that drew me to Nick Flynn, but, boy oh boy, it show is one sentence how this poet is able to turn you completely around with the use of one word. Specifically: thorny.

It is, in fact, the two poems entitled "Cartoon Physics, part 1" and "Cartoon Physics, part 2" that caught me.

Contemplating the perceptions of real life pain and atrocities through the eyes and psychological abilities of children, he provides irony, sympathy and playful lyricism.

Pardon me for this forthcoming long quote, but I feel this is a more than appropriate example:

"Years ago, alone in her room, my mother cut/hole in the air/& vanished into it. The report hung &/deafened, closely by an over-/whelming silence, a ringing/in the ears. Today I take a piece of chalk/& sketch a door in a wall. By the rules/of cartoon physics on I can open this door."

These "rules of cartoon physics" are used as an insightful tool in the speaker's specific perception of the loss of his mother.  The story telling is built around childish ideology, but the  first line ends with cold facts: "my mother cut."

The poem about Jesus is easier to consider with humor as well as the underlying confusion/fear, but the innocence of the cartoon physics saturated in the distance of the speaker intrigued me far more than the thorny Lord.