Two New Poems: “Of Beauty” and “Mental”

David St. John and Andrea Werblin Reid consider speech acts in their various complexities in two poems from the LARB Quarterly issue no. 42, “Gossip.”

By David St. John, Andrea Werblin ReidAugust 18, 2024

• LARB Lit

• Poetry

These poems are a preview of the LARB Quarterly, no. 42: Gossip. Become a member for more fiction, essays, criticism, poetry, and art from this issue—plus the next four issues of the Quarterly in print. And join us to celebrate Gossip’s release at our end-of-summer launch party on August 22.

¤

DAVID ST. JOHN

Of Beauty

I think Jacob said of the ladder
It was     A Thing of Beauty

Yet I’m not certain if he meant
Its luminous destination

Or the ladder itself as our vehicle
To such pure mystery

I’d heard the phrase spoken
First with certainty by my own

Father holding up a glossy drama
School photo of my mother

Lifted from his torn-ragged college
Scrapbook one day

& I read in an essay this same
Phrase referring to an elegant lie

In a famous novel by John le Carré
—with whom I once had lunch

In Baltimore along with an amusing
Anonymous actress—

& my father when I told him this story
Called it an especially

Savory detail as he relished its mystery
Though as a boy I’d discovered

My mother had a way of telling stories
Without a certain objective

Reality that I could locate or quite
Confirm but I confess I was

Undisturbed by a few untruths
Offered with such original beauty

Of image & a flair for the magical
Honored more than fact

So perhaps what she left to me in 
Death was beyond the bare

Recognition truth cannot always be
A thing of beauty just as a ladder

Reaching a story of forgiveness 
Reveals at its end a thing of beauty

Remains a thing of mystery

¤

ANDREA WERBLIN REID

Mental

for the record, please state your name and anxiety,
the reason for your glassy eyes, and why
your apartment is immersed in slices of light
when all you do is speak of their opposite:
brute storms and guards, nightmares
that cheat their way through.

it’s not where the brain meets its bully,
remember, but how the synapses are salted.

it’s just regular thoughts gone turntable.
a series of nouns maimed as they exit your mouth

please state your pills, the state of your lungs.
the stripes of every zebra you remember.

if machines don’t work, there is always
umbrage, altars, u-turns. you could try gratitude,
sure, but that’s a different kind of singing.

¤

Featured image: Fragment from Bedcover (Crazy Quilt Block), c. 1884. Gift of Helen Donathen, Art Institute of Chicago (1960.143). CC0, artic.edu. Accessed August 16, 2024. Image has been cropped.