Conversational Surprise

Benjamin Myers draws me into a poem with ordinary words of ordinary people . . . leading to moments of quiet insight that keep me turning pages forward. And turning pages back to re-read favorites. “Grown-Ass Man,” from The Family Book of Martyrs, is one of those.

For starters: the title. I hear this title—the voice, the inflection, the vernacular irony. Can’t help myself, I grin. I want to read a poem that calls itself “Grown-Ass Man.”

Myers opens with the image of a tractor mower on “the empty lot across the street at 5:30 / on a summer Monday morning.” In five effortless stanzas of four lines each, he listens to the mower, “the pings of rock // bouncing up against the metal deck.” He remembers the derelict house that once occupied the lot, recalling that “for three months an abandoned baby / doll with one missing eye sat / on the roof outside the attic window.” This singular detail lands me on the porch with Myers.

Now, stirred from tall grass by the mower,
a white dog noses an empty can of energy
drink by the curb, lifts its leg and lowers
it again without pissing. I am 39 this week.

I love the surprise here—I am 39 this week—love that nowhere in the nineteen preceding lines does the poem suggest awareness of or anxiety about aging. But sudden awareness is just that: sudden. Sometimes it arrives without embellishment. The number alone suffices here. 39. We need not be told that’s one year shy of 40.

Myers turns then, from details of these minutes on his porch to facts about himself on the cusp of 39. He is “learning to walk slowly beside / my small son . . . learning to walk / slowly beside my mother into the cancer clinic.”

Then, in a perfect bit of serendipity, Myers overhears a gruff neighbor arguing with his wife, insisting, I am a grown-ass man. The man repeats his claim. And Myers closes out: “I repeat it too, quietly, /  liking the sound of it.”

Page after page, in The Family Book of Martyrs, Benjamin Myers surprises—with subtle moments, gentle epiphanies such as this one. I keep my copy near at hand. These days more than ever, we need this kind of poetry.

Notes:

Thanks to the poet, I can share this poem here. See below.

A former Poet Laureate of Oklahoma, Benjamin Myers is the author of four poetry collections. He is a professor of literature at Oklahoma Baptist University, where he directs the Great Books Honors Program.

The Family Book of Martyrs is available here ⇒

Grown-Ass Man

A man backs a tractor slowly down metal ramps
behind a flatbed truck and begins to mow
the empty lot across the street at 5:30
on a summer Monday morning.

I am standing on the front porch drinking coffee
before I drive my mother to chemo. I watch
the tractor drag its large, flat mower
around the lot, listen to the pings of rock

bouncing up against the metal deck.
Last fall, they tore down the house
that used to be there, its peeling roof patched
only by leaves fallen from one large oak.

There were stacks of car batteries by the front door,
and for three months an abandoned baby
doll with one missing eye sat
on the roof outside the attic window.

Now, stirred from tall grass by the mower,
a white dog noses an empty can of energy
drink by the curb, lifts its leg and lowers
it again without pissing. I am 39 this week.

I am learning to walk slowly beside
my small son when we go to the library
down the street. I am learning to walk
slowly beside my mother into the cancer clinic.

As the mower powers down, I hear
my neighbor’s voice suddenly loud
in argument with his wife. I am
a grown-ass man, he is yelling.

I am a grown-ass man, he repeats,
and I repeat it too, quietly,
liking the sound of it.

Benjamin Myers
The Family Book of Martyrs (Lamar University Literary Press, 2022)