This snapshot is from Poetry, July/August 2023.

Midway through Wong May’s poem titled “The Last Film,” the speaker’s mother-in-law melts down briefly after a movie (“8 Women” by François Ozon) and a restaurant dinner (fried courgette flowers, salade Niçoise) with the family.

In my Texas dialect “give out” means to break down from exhaustion: The old boy plumb gave out. Wong May’s usage feels different, more akin to “letting out” emotion. She does so “with some vehemence.” I like the phrase “you lot” a lot. It’s often proffered sneeringly, and I associate it with British English: You lot are spewing an inverted pyramid of piffle.

The mother-in-law quickly recovers her composure; the outburst is absorbed into embarrassed silence by her offspring, never to be spoken of. The poem ruminates on the circumstances surrounding a lifespan haloed with winter misting, ending with a question.

The lady who glitches outside the restaurant is 83 years old. Time’s wingèd chariot tailgates her. The flare and sputter of the match is a glowing emblem for the outburst pondered in the poem: an access of rage at decline, possibly of ambivalence and exasperation over the impudent vitality of progeny. The phrase woefully alive stamps her dismal moment.

British radio presenters report someone’s death by inserting a formulaic “sadly”: So-and-so sadly died. It’s a bargain basement bauble of bogus sympathy, threadbare and fatuous like America’s “thoughts and prayers.” Death, be not proud — nor slobbered by pious rhetoric, please. Those who are woefully alive may well go happy into that good night, glad to be quit of their lot.

(c) 2023 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved