For your Enjoyment: “A New Path Will Bring Rich Rewards” by Jynne Dilling Martin
Friday, February 12th, 2010A New Path Will Bring Rich Rewards
by Jynne Dilling Martin
Make no mistake about it, slime molds are
the most interesting organisms on Earth.
Chop one’s body into little orange pieces
and strew it throughout a labyrinth:
the chunks actually find one another, slither
back together, reclump and glop their way out!
Why not take a page from their book, folks?
Our homogeneity is becoming alarming:
a dutiful child with shined shoes arrives
every thirty minutes for a pianoforte lesson,
the awkward herd in the women’s room
take a simultaneous piss at intermission,
we all seem to sit on our asses, look up
at bright things exploding in the sky,
give no thought to sleeping upside-down,
to shooting ourselves in both shoulders,
or to living full-time under the sea! Christ
tried to set a creative example: he was like
hey, heres a bunch of crazy things to try,
you can even put nails through your hands
and end up totally cool in just three days.
But two millennia later, no one eventually
lives on the moon. He must be disappointed.
Without eyes, wheels, hammers, or phone lines
slime molds have transcended vastly more
challenging circumstances; if they had brainstorm
as well as a sense of humor we’d be the punchline
of every lame-ass slime mold joke. How many
humans does it take to figure out regeneration?
Dunno Bob, shall we sprout fingers and count?
—
This wonderful poem was in the TriQuarterly guest edited by David Kirby and Barbara Hamby and dubbed “Ultra-Talk”. Those familiar with people like Charles Harper Webb, Denise Duhamel, Dorianne Laux, Albert Goldbarth, Campbell McGrath et al. will definitely enjoy this issue of TriQuarterly. Just a couple notes about this very entertaining poem which opened up the wonderful world of slime molds to me. The tone is very consistent and believable, glop (L6) is an amazing verb. The poem does bring up a good question– what next? For humans, how’re we evolving now? Not that I’m about to get into trying to answer that, it would really just devolve into a lame ass slime mold joke I’m sure.
For more poems by Jynne Dilling Martin check out this bit at Boston Review, and these four at Perihelion. (Don’t miss “An Animal With Claws Should Use Them”.)Word.

on their subscription list, and updated my address! What a wonderful surprise to get the newest IR in my mailbox. I’d been wrapped up in the Ultra-Talk issue of TriQuarterly, so definitely a slight change of pace, and perhaps it has something to do with the juxtaposition of the two journals over the holiday break, or maybe because I have a soft spot in my heart for a poem of my own, about a vision of my father and a piece of fruit. So, universality or coincidence? The Indiana Review liked it enough to print it, I was drawn back to this poem a number of poems while flipping haphazardly through the journal, so, anyone? What do ya think? You can’t deny that “Twilight Kitchen” and “in the fluorescent light of the present” sound sweet. Yes, they produce saccharin synesthesia. Anyway, subscribe to the
Willow Springs

I couldn’t find out a whole lot about Tana Jean Welch without, you know, making an actual effort, but here are a couple more poems at 