The Invisible Ring
‘Garbage Disposal’ by Oak Morse, winner of the 2017 Magpie Award, pulls readers into a domestic scene, and holds them there tight — like small hands on a splintered mop.
Judge Renée Sarojini Saklikar praised this poem for its depth and unity. As she tells us: “Form and the longer line work in tandem to please the eye and ear, both sense and syntax engaged. There is unity of voice, where the third person is taken up with confidence and consistently employed. Enjambment, where the sense of one line folds over and into another, creating opportunity of double-meaning, is a highlight and a measure of why this poem wins first place: it’s an incantation, precise and yet metaphorically spacious enough that we can read any number of desires within its precise domestic scenario. Worth re-reading and worth saying aloud.“
We are delighted to share with you the first two stanzas of this incredible poem, excerpted here.
Garbage Disposal
by Oak Morse
we wake up earlier than sparrows to sanitize
the house as if it doesn’t already smell like bleach.
we scrub the invisible ring around the tub. we
windex the glass so we can see straight through it.
we make sure the corners are free of cobwebs
and make sure spiders aren’t overlooking all this
work we do. we mop right to left, left to right. we
don’t open the door for our friends, because we are
on punishment. we’ve been on punishment for
centuries though.
we ignore the sweat sliding down our backs.
we make sure mama knows that she makes
herself clear. if y’all don’t do it right, you got to do it
over! mama, mama don’t you know you are raising
hell, not young boys? we stop-up the sink so
the water bill won’t be higher than jupiter. we
take baths with two inches of water. we scrub
ourselves down to our chromosomes. we brush
our tongues as if that is going to eliminate this
sour taste in our mouths that we have about
mama. we pick up the big stuff off the floor so it
won’t tear up the vacuum, or she will tear our
butts up with switches we have to hand-pick
ourselves.
To read the rest of ‘Garbage Disposal’, pick up Issue 16, Autumn 2017!
Oak Morse lives in Houston, Texas, where he teaches creative writing and performance, and leads a youth poetry troupe, the Phoenix Fire-Spitters. In 2020 he was a finalist for the Witness Literary Award as well as a semifinalist for the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. Currently a Warren Wilson MFA candidate, Oak has received a Pushcart Prize nomination, a fellowship from Twelve Literary Arts and the Stars in the Classroom honor from the Houston Texans. His work appears in Strange Horizons, PANK, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Nimrod, Cosmonauts Avenue, and Solstice, among others. Oak was named a Brooklyn Poets Fellow for study in Darrel Alejandro Holnes’s Writing Revolutionary Love workshop. Visit him at oakmorse.com.
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