Lionhearts by Karyna McGlynn—National Poetry Month 2023

 

      Karyna McGlynn.

Karyna McGlynn grew up in Austin, Texas, and earned an MFA at the University of Michigan and a PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Houston.  She is the author of three books of poetry— I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl (Sarabande, 2009), which won the Kathryn A. Morton Prize;  Hothouse (Sarabande, 2017); and 50 Things Kate Bush Taught Me About the Multiverse (Sarabande, 2022.  She is also the author of three chapbooks— Scorpionica (2007), and The 9-Day Queen Gets Lost on Her Way to the Execution (2016). Her work has been featured in the anthology Best American Nonrequired Reading (2010).

McGlynn uses psychological ephemera, pop culture, and improvisational plots to investigate danger and human longing. “Part film noir, part horror flick, these innovative poems dwell in the cul-de-sac badlands where crimes and heinous misdeeds are recurring,” noted Karla Huston in Library Journal. In an interview for SHARKFORUM, McGlynn noted the importance of temporality to her work: “The past is always present in my writing. … We are not purely products of our own time—we are a decoupage of memories, both individual and shared.”

A member of five former National Poetry Slam teams, McGlynn has served as the organizer of the Houston Indie Book Fest and as managing editor of Gulf Coast. She is also the Director of Creative Writing at Interlochen Center for the Arts.

What drew me to today’s selection, Lionhearts, is the shared experience of communal ecstasy inspired by a work of art.  In my case it was a gathering decades ago on a Chicago Easter Sunday during an epic ice storm.  We came together for a group reading from James Joyce’s Ulysses and were fueled not by box wine but by potent acid, pot, and shots of Jameson’s Irish whiskey.

McGlynn's inspiration--Lionhearts, an album by beloved and iconic English singer/songwriter Kate Bush.

Lionhearts

One very cold night in Ann Arbor

 I went to a party where “Kate Bush”

 was the password. I put on my Uggs

 & trudged through the slush.

 I climbed the fire escape to an attic apartment

 where five other writers & I

 sat around a Crosley turntable

 & a box of Bordeaux Blend

 & a stale bâtard with expensive butter

 & listened to Lionheart

 & talked about line breaks

 & grew increasingly drunk

 & complimentary & eager

 —for aesthetics’ sake—

 to investigate each other up close.

 Some of us kissed. Kate stalked us

 from the cover—crimped mane

 & lion-skin suit—as two people

 with silk scarves tied someone

 to the radiator & danced madly,

 leaping on chairs, licking paws!

 Leo rising, downward dog!

 Candles sputtering their last magic

 into the rafters as we sank straight

 through the secondhand loveseat:

 floral flickering, ticking undone.

 This is one of my fondest memories.

 The whole room a gold & rolling

 ship of girl flame! But there—

 in the dark, catholic corners

 where I can’t quite see—a stowaway

 sometimes darts. Imagine such a creature:

 subsisting all this time

 on the dusty crusts & vinegars

 of someone else’s slight

 & misplaced shame.

 

—Karyna Mc Glynn

 

Published in the October 2022 issue of Poetry magazine.