Why I Chose It: Michigan Quarterly Review reader A. Shaikh on why they recommended “Alternative Facts” by Susan Azar Porterfield for our Winter 2023 issue. You can purchase the issue here.
It’s an incredible gift to find a poem aware of its own multitudes, such as “Alternative Facts” by Susan Azar Porterfield. The poem begins by stating its central move, “A bomb has been tossed in the middle of this poem,” yet the marvel of the piece arrives as couplet after couplet the poet is still able to retain an element of shock. The thrill of Porterfield’s writing then is in how she evades and enacts lyricism, pushing on associative images to create a slurry of facts. Porterfield wields the sparseness of her couplet form to create distinctive moments of subterfuge and surprise, my favorite being perhaps when she writes “Make language your whore. / Clarity kills.” This paired with the deftness with which Porterfield hinges each line creates a poem that I as writer simultaneously envy and admire, but as an editor, am beyond grateful to publish. I hope you enjoy reading this poem, and are equally enthralled by Porterfield’s “statements pure as rushing your body on a humming grenade.”
A bomb has been tossed
in the middle of this poem,
well, let’s not say middle.
Try first-encountered heart, i.e.,
a pivot centered round
mostly equal parts about a start,
and by start
I actually mean/I don’t mean
beginning, though you
might think so.
That’s up to you.
I may mean astonish, maybe
flush out, as in rabbits or deer,
(better to keep things loose, pensez vous?)
Take crown of thorns, e.g. With that
there’s blood. Avoid blood.
Also bones, spit and piss.
Flirt with crown of twigs or better,
nature’s wreath. Make language your whore.
Clarity kills, as in
“Please, I’m hungry.”
“I’m afraid to die.”
Statements pure as rushing your body
on a humming grenade.
Push this meme instead,
He repositioned his self for maximum effect.
To read more from this issue, you can purchase the Winter 2023 issue here.
