Transcript

I’m Major Jackson, and this is The Slowdown.

I saw my first magic show in middle school. A visiting magician made lunch containers disappear, chairs levitate, and a previously cut sheet of paper whole again, right before our eyes. She dramatically uttered the word “abracadabra” and presto, a veil dropped to reveal the world in all of its enchantment — that single word triggered a wonder in me about the unseen, about things as they are beyond the physical plane. I had not yet taken Mr. Feltyberger’s physics class at Philadelphia’s Central High or any other science classes that might have explained some of her tricks.

The illusion of magic opened up for me something else as a vehicle to the other side, to what lies hidden — language. All one had to do was channel their intelligence and spirit, and imagine that molecules re-constellate or vanish all together. I still carry a small belief that words assembled in an as-yet-discovered order can shift our material reality, can change the consciousness of a person, a community, a nation.

This kind of capable poet, who Jerome Rothenberg refers to as “technicians of the sacred,” captivates me. Their words might be read as spells, or songs with a global reach. Over my lifetime, I have encountered many poems that felt like conjuration, and attended many poetry readings that were incantatory.

I long to write poems of a mystical nature, where the wisdom of the ages is carried forth in new forms and phrases. Today’s brief poem, in its associative leaps, could be the seed to a new way of seeing, if we just let its words work their magic.

Nude
by James Kelly Quigley

First there was the sound of majestic pines. Marmalade came later and with
pansies. Today Brigham Young is a place you can visit, if you so choose. Myself, I
went to Chincoteague, but I guess all the ponies were sleeping. The fleas were, in a 
word, autodidactic. I drank the packet of coffee that was doled out by the state
representative. Everything’s liminal if you want to be a dick about it. Mystery comes
from the Latin mysterium, denoting a craft or service. A man jogs toward a white
moving-van and removes his glockenspiel. I’m really trying to tell you something
right now.

“Nude” by James Kelly Quigley. Used by permission of the poet.