Forrest HamerWhat Happened
To say about it one thing. No, two. It was a horror. It could not be spoken. So first there was the problem of recovering speech. Calling out to it, listening each other. We looked to the assurances of nature--regular violence, regular relief. Color splayed before us--yellows, rhythms of red. Faces and patterns in faces. Patience. Finally, a word, but not many. Silence again, longing. More words but not what happened; words we had already said. Horror holding, a black hole. Opening a little, Then a little more, then: we could think about the horror: what happened A kind of speech, but not yet.
Forrest Hamer is the author of Call & Response (Alice James, 1995), winner of the Beatrice Hawley Award; and Middle Ear (Roundhouse/Heyday, 2000), winner of the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association Award. His work has appeared in many journals, and has been anthologized in Poet's Choice: Poems for Everyday Life, The Geography of Home: California's Poetry of Place, Making Callaloo: 25 Years of Black Literature, Blues Poems, and the 1994 and 2000 editions of Best American Poetry. His new book Rift is forthcoming from Four Way Books.
