James Brock and Denise Duhamel
Upon Hearing that My Grant Application Was Passed Over
and the Winner Was a Bio-Tech Professor Who Has Designed
Genetically-Altered Protein for Buckwheat Seed
Okay, call me Sylvia Plath. I wanted that award,
the crystal glass eagle, the pendant, the certificate,
the lapel pin, the thousand bucks, and the parking space
next to the university president's spot-the whole
platinum and sapphire tiara. I knew I should have
written that poem on the manipulations
of amino acid balance in buckwheat seed proteins.
I knew I should have named that new genetic
strand Omicron-Brockide-32, should have brokered
the patent rights to Monsanto, let them spread the seed
of my pumped-up, high-octane, drought-tolerant,
American-can-do-know-how buckwheat
to sub-Sahara Africa and southern Mongolia.
One year later, then, I would have written
the grant report, presented it to the committee
on PowerPoint, and finished off my presentation
with a streaming video clip, showing some adolescent
boy, from Gambia, say, and he would be eating
my buckwheat flat bread, and there he would be,
digitalized, smiling, full and muscular. Yes,
and at that moment, vindicated and wise,
teary-eyed and generous, the grant committee
would gather and lift me on their shoulders, laughing
and singing, joyful for all the corporate sponsorships that
would follow me and bless our humble home
institution. For me, dare I dream further confirmations?
O, to be Nationally Endowed, Guggenheimed, Nobelled!
Of course, in Gambia, and other geographies
beneath the sweep and hoozah of fellowships
and announcements in The Chronicle of Higher Education,
the newly nourished could be striking the flint
of their first syllables of their first poems, poems
whose phrases-under the most subdued of flames-would
coolly scorch and burn our best American intention.
Upon Hearing that My Friend's Grant Application Was Passed Over
and the Winner Was a Bio-Tech Professor Who Has Designed
Genetically-Altered Protein for Buckwheat Seed
I guess this means that I am officially one of those university people I
scorned fifteen years ago
when I danced in the Nuyorican Poets Cafe between sets of open mic poets
when I shared a pizza with a pregnant teen and a vet with Agent Orange
when I made my own chapbook and passed it out for free to anyone who wanted
a copy
when I had two homeless friends and a Rasta roommate who ate cold RavioliOs
straight from the can when my most expensive possession was my loft bed and
I'd let anyone who stopped by the apartment by carve his or her initials
into the crooked ladder
when I cashed my check on Fridays and spelled out a big cursive D in coke
when I bought nickel bags on Avenue B before it became Avenue Bistro
when I was robbed and mugged and pieced together temp jobs like centos
when I got my prescriptions without a prescription from this pharmacist on
East 5th Street who would give you whatever you wanted if you paid full
price which I had to do anyway since I didn't have insurance, or a doctor
for that matter
when I was always severely heartbroken or in love or both
when I never thought I'd write a cover letter on university stationery never
mind a letter of recommendation for a grant
Oh friend, I really wanted your application to flourish like Jack's stalk so
that the committee would climb into the heavens on your poems which would
lead them to a goose and eggs and more golden poems because a little extra
money was the very least you deserve
now that we both have mortgages and car payments and dwindling retirement
accounts
now that we both have doctors and chiropractors and roof repairs
now that we have graded four hundred thousand papers between us and we are
horrified by botox, but what if it didn't have side effects? What then?
now that we are forced to give dinner parties and go to dinner parties and
eat bran cereal the next morning and the only big cursive D I spell out
these days is with wheat germ
now that we are role models, sort of, and the younger poets ask, how did you
do it?
now that the economy doesn't let anyone stay bohemian because rent, even in
nowhere towns, even when you're willing to share a tiny space, is pricey,
and our good students want to go to law school and how can we stop them
now that your poems are passed over in favor of genetically-altered protein
now that an organic cantaloupe costs $6 and everyone is afraid of
second-hand smoke
now that we're too old to spray paint "landlord scum" all over the East
Village in the middle of the night
now that we're red ink and chalk dust
now that we type or print neatly in the spaces provided and attach an extra
sheet as necessary
James Brock has won fellowships from the National
Endowment for the Arts, the Idaho Commission for the
Arts. His most recent book of poetry is nearly Florida (Anhinga,
2000). He
lives on the banks of Caloosahatchee River in Fort Myers, Florida.
Denise Duhamel's most recent book of poetry is Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems. She lives in Hollywood, Florida.