Associate Editor Taylor Byas: Denise Bergman’s “Hit the Tree” expertly captures the cloudy aftermath of tragedy, how it stranges space and time (yes, using “strange” as a verb is entirely necessary here). Bergman’s writing is breathless, a strategic babbling attempt to catalog all of the details of a car accident. And among the debris of this list, everyday items become symbols of loss, tokens of a loved one’s last living moments.
To hear Denise read her poem, click below:
Hit the Tree
snapped-off sideview jettisoned skyward onto a tree’s lowest, a shocked tree’s lowest lying limb, the ’94 Honda Civic’s on-impact ear-shaped mirror eye the only part left intact, even the belly-dancer snake-arm wipers twisted, trapped in the metronome’s full stop, his red-stripe-detailed hood corrugated, crunched, an accordion’s airless bellows, a stormy March Friday just after dawn, critters fleeing thunder into rock crevices, western bluebirds frantic, sparrows tucking heads under wings, a tree, some kind of tree, stiffened against impact, why now day and night do I try to squeeze into that suddenly narrowed space between fender and tree, metal and bark, the slim slit when his skin still enclosed organ and bone, iced coffee corn muffin paper napkin at arm’s reach, tuba mouthpiece bulging his plaid shorts pocket, I need to fill those inches with seconds, pinpoint the when in the where, rake through the raked-through debris for a trickle of his voice, wrap my arms round the waist of the tree that didn’t keel from force of impact, the tree whose bloodknot eyes caught his sideview vision before its revision, before a highway cop with baggy rubber gloves slid the unblinking eye into a labeled ziplock, no ladder, I could have reached up, I could have wiped the reflection with my sleeve
Denise Bergman is the author of The Shape of the Keyhole (Black Lawrence, 2021), Three Hands None (Black Lawrence, 2019), A Woman in Pieces Crossed a Sea (West End, 2014), The Telling (Cervena Barva, 2014), and Seeing Annie Sullivan (Cedar Hill, 2008). Poems appeared recently in Consequence, On the Seawall, Lily, and About Place. See more at denisebergman.com.
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