Grief’s Familiar Rooms
Sometimes I am okay
even though when I come home
from work,
I still sit in your chair for hours
without taking my coat off
pulling at its buttons
that are not answers—
Acknowledgments
Blessings to the editors of the following journals for their support of these poems, sometimes in different versions, genres, or with different titles:
2 Bridges Review: “Tattoos”;
Birmingham Poetry Review: “My Youngest Daughter Brings Me Daisies and Bits of Plastic Trash”;
Blue Earth Review: “In the Midnight Waking”;
BOAAT: “Down the Line”;
Brevity: “Toledo, Ohio 1977”;
The Collagist: “The Second O of Sorrow,” “Portrait Written with a Cough”;
Congeries: “Pittsburgh,” “The Bravery of Birds”;
Crab Creek Review: “Scribbled on the Scaffolding of”;
Descant: “Youngstown Monologue: Captured Light Stained Glass,”
“You Are Beautiful as the Absence of the Air”;
Diode: “My Grief Grows a White Flower,” “Grief,” “Grief ’s Familiar Rooms”;
Flagler Review: “Gertrude Stein Lighthouse Sonnet”;
Forklift: “Triptych of Desire and the Duende”;
Glass Poetry Journal: “Far from Any Classroom”;
H_ngm_n: “We Pay the Rent We Breathe”;
The Healing Muse: “Something Lovely as the Rain”;
Laurel Review: “What Do You Say To a Daughter When She Suspects Her Mother Is Dying”;
Matter: “Poem Made of East Sides”;
Moon City Review: “Psalm of the Working Poor”;
Ninth Letter (Online Special Midwest Writers Issue): “Biography of LeBron as Ohio”;
North American Review: “DJ Jehovah”;
Poetry East: “Karaoke at the Y Not Bar, Carnegie, PA”;
Radar: “You’re Good at Going Under”;
Stone Canoe: “Elegy on the Side of a Milk Carton,” “We a New Ledger”;
Talking River Review: “Leaking Light,” “Our Love as Lead Belly or”;
Upstreet: “Parade Street.”
“You are Beautiful as the Absence of the Air” received the 2015 Betsy Colquitt Poetry Award from Texas Christian University’s Descant Literary Review.
“In the Absence of Others I Wanted Something Brave” was published in the anthology Manifesto (University of Akron Press, 2016), edited by Alan Michael Parker and Rebecca Hazelton.
These poems would not exist without the support and bravery against the odds of my partner, Lisa Akus, and my children: my son Gabriel, and my daughters Amara Rumi, and Andaluzja Akhmatova.
Sources for the epigrams: January Gill O’Neil from her poem “Questions of Sleep” published in her book Misery Island (CavanKerry Press, 2014). Land of Talk (Elizabeth Powell) from the song “Some Are Lakes” off the album Land of Talk (Saddle Creek Records, 2008); John T. Irwin’s book, Apollinaire lived in Paris, I Live in Cleveland, Ohio, (John Hopkins University Press, 2011); Susan Aizenberg from her poem “Art” published in her book Muse (Southern Illinois University Press, 2002).
Gratitude and love to my editor and publisher Peter Conners and everyone at BOA for all you do for poetry.
Thank you to Poet’s Hall, Civitas, and Mercyhurst University for bestowing upon me a Lifetime Achievement Award for Poetic Achievement.
Thank you Cee, Greg, Christina, and to the Erie poetry and pool communities particularly, Bigg Wash, Matt and Marc Borczon, Monica Igras, Kat, Chuck, Kim, Tom and Daren.
Gratitude to these fine people who offered encouragement, support friendship or inspiration during the writing of these poems: Jeffrey McDaniel, Kevin Goodan, Kimberly Burwick, Luisa A. Igloria, Patrick Rosal, Julie Babcock, Jose Padua, Ernesto Mercer, Phil Metres, Sheryl St. Germain, Roger Bonair-Agard, Joel Dias Porter, Al Maginnes, Maria Gillan, Martin Espada, Carolyn Forche, Lee Upton, Ra Washington, Oliver De La Paz, Robert Fanning, Dorianne Laux, Justin Lightfoot Bigos, Brian Gilmore, Silvana Straw, Karen Craigo, Les Kay, Derek McKown, Cheryl Dumesnil, Liz Ahl, Holly Wendt, Laura Moran, Gloria Mindock, Jeremy Shraffenburger, Vince Gotera, Rachel Morgan, Jim O’Laughlin, Les Roka, Christian Anton Gerard, Micah Towery, Matthew Olzmann, Sarah Shotland, Adam Love, Ray McManus, Jeffrey Thompson, George Guida, Jennifer Sweeny, Chad Sweeny, Jessica Lizardi, William Stobb, Barbara Unger, Jason Baldinger, Karen Schubert, Reginald Dwayne Betts, John Hoppenthaler, M.L. Liebler, BJ Ward, John Smith, Joe Weil, Emily Vogel, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Steve Kuusisto, Sarah Freligh, Albert Abonado, Phil Memmer, Cary Waterman, Sass Brown, Alicia Mathias, Patrick Werle, John Gallaher, Chad Burrall, Lisa Fay Coutley, Tony Vallone, Marc Jacksina, Tacoma White, Scott Beal, Tim Suermondt, Terry Blackhawk, Alex Lemon, Martha Silano, Barbara Jane Reyes, Meg Kearney, Erika Meitner, Susan Blackwell Ramsey, and the late and dearly missed: Cody Todd, Derick Burleson, and June King.
Notes:
On November 24, 2014, twelve-year-old Tamir Rice was murdered in broad daylight at Cudell Recreation Center in Cleveland, Ohio, by Cleveland rookie patrolman Timothy Loehmann. Rice had been playing with an air soft gun when Loehmann, in response to a 911 call that said the gun may be a toy, pulled up, opened the door and shot Rice. Video evidence showed Loehmann pulled his gun in two seconds. After the shooting, he and his partner Frank Garmback did not attempt any first aid on Tamir, who died later that day at the hospital. No charges were filed against either officer.
The title for “In the Midnight Waking” was taken from the poem “Come Up from the Fields Father” by Walt Whitman.
About the Author
Sean Thomas Dougherty has worked in a newspaper plant, as a security guard, a poet in the schools, a teacher of parolees, as an untenured college lecturer, in a pool hall, as a caregiver and medical technician for people with traumatic brain injuries, and as a performer. For over thirty years he has also been a writer. He is the author or editor of fifteen books, including All You Ask for Is Longing: Poems 1994–2014, Sasha Sings the Laundry on the Line; and Broken Hallelujahs, all published by BOA Editions. His awards include a Fulbright Lectureship to the Balkans, and an appearance in The Best American Poetry. He lives in Erie, Pennsylvania, with the poet Lisa Akus and their two daughters, Amara Rumi and Andaluzja Akhmatova.
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