July 11: Messed Up Place, Poet of the Week, Jericho Brown, "Dear Dr. Frankenstein"

The world is kind of a messed up place right now, if you haven't noticed.  Police officers are getting shot in the streets of Dallas.  A reality TV star is going to be the Republican nominee for President of the United States.  Two Broke Girls is still on TV.  Isis.  Terror threats.  Body parts washing up on the beaches in Rio where the Summer Olympics are scheduled to begin in less than a month.

It takes a poet, sometimes, to make sense of senseless situations.  Jericho Brown is my choice for Poet of the Week.  He was also recently Rita Dove's pick as one of the poets under 40 to watch.  Brown writes about race and sexuality and gender.  He's as concerned about our messed up world as I am.

Sometimes, Saint Marty thinks that God just shakes His head at the world and thinks, "I could have done better."  Just ask Jericho Brown.

Dear Dr. Frankenstein

by:  Jericho Brown

I, too, know the science of building men

Out of fragments in little light

Where I'll be damned if lightning don't

Strike as I forget one 

May have a thief's thumb,

Another, a murderer's arm,

And watch the men I've made leave

Like an idea I meant to write down, 

Like a vehicle stuck

In reverse, like the monster

God came to know the moment 

Adam named animals and claimed 

Eve, turning from heaven to her

As if she was his

To run. No word he said could be tamed.

No science. No design. Nothing taken 

Gently into his hand or your hand or mine, 

Nothing we erect is our own.