"Resistance" by Traci Brimhall (February 2019)

Want to keep going and dig into some of the specific images and patterns together?

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Here’s the poem copied cleanly at the top so we can see it all in one place:

> I must be the heavy globe
> of hydrangea, always bowing
> by summer’s end. Must be salt,
> like sadness at a burning city,
> an ethical disobedience. I must be
> a violet thorn of fire. These days
> I don’t taste good, but I must
> be singing and boneless, a lily. I must beg for it, eyes flashing
> silver as a fish. Must be a rosary
> of listening. This is how I know
> to love. I must hide under desks
> when the forecast reads: leaves red
> as meat, sleeping lions, chandelier
> of bone, moon smooth as a worry
> stone. I must want my life and fear
> the thin justice of grass. Clouds
> hunt, wound the rising tide. I must
> be paradised. On my knees again.
> —Traci Brimhall

I’m hearing you as a reader here, wanting to sit with this poem together rather than get a full interpretation handed to you.

To start us slow, I’m curious:

If you just go by feeling and not analysis yet, what are the two or three images or lines that stay with you the most after reading this—either because they confuse you, move you, or feel oddly familiar?

Want to share those, and then I can ask a few more focused, gentle questions about them?

I must be the heavy globe
of hydrangea, always bowing
by summer’s end. Must be salt,
like sadness at a burning city,
an ethical disobedience. I must be
a violet thorn of fire. These days
I don’t taste good, but I must
be singing and boneless, a lily. I must beg for it, eyes flashing
silver as a fish. Must be a rosary
of listening. This is how I know
to love. I must hide under desks
when the forecast reads: leaves red
as meat, sleeping lions, chandelier
of bone, moon smooth as a worry
stone. I must want my life and fear
the thin justice of grass. Clouds
hunt, wound the rising tide. I must
be paradised. On my knees again.

by Traci Brimhall

The repetition of “I must be…” hits like a drum all the way through this poem, almost like the speaker is trying on different selves or rules they think they have to follow. As you read it, what kind of pressure or expectation do you feel building on the speaker with all those “must” phrases?

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