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Books by Lorenzo Thomas
Dancing on Main Street /
Sing the Sun Up /
Chances
Are Few
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Critical
Analysis of
“Instructions for Your New Osiris”
By Van
G. Garrett
After reading Lorenzo Thomas’ poem
“Instructions for Your New Osiris” excerpted from
Chances
Are Few I had a wonderful epiphany.
A revelation that spoke to me the way no Shakespearean
sonnet has; the notion a breakup with a loved one can be
skillfully written and well articulated, despite its bitter and
turbulent past.
In the first stanza Thomas establishes the
setting with immediacy. We are in the ex’s boudoir thinking
about the absence of “Canopic old Egyptian jugs” that held
the writer’s attention until his ex “Put them in her bag/
And toted them to her new lover’s house.” What is so
wonderful about this stanza is it creates the scene, focuses on
uncommon household items, and the manner which the lover takes
or “totes” her wares to her new home.
Stanzas three and four portray the humanistic
appeal of loneliness. The lines “My heart’s in one/ I’m
dead / because no longer does my body hold a heart” illustrate
the narrator’s despair and feelings of incompleteness. We
realize metaphorically he is like the aforementioned jugs that
once resided in the home—empty and jostled in transition.
However, the poem’s sad tone shifts to a more profound realm
of dejection in stanzas five through seven.
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Another
holds what’s left of pride
The day my
best friend laughed in my face
Because he
knew she was his other best friend’s
Lady
Another
holds the essence
Of my
self-respect
And still
another, all my tenderness
For her
That’s
all.
There’s
nothing left
But dead politeness |
The previous lines convey an extinguished
pride, trampled respect, disregard of feelings, and an obvious
lapse in communication. The writer’s dejected spirit later
manifests into confusion and disdain as the poem progresses. We
see how the ex “lies like the difficulty of game show
questions” in a show the writer doesn’t understand. He is
confused and seeks to ascertain answers to the drama that besets
him.
In the last stanza we are not presented with
a wonderful resolution, rather a nostalgic and weary frustration
that tries to comprehend how a relationship that once appeared
to be sincere has turned sour: “When I was still alive, before
I knew/ The full name of the door,/ I used to speak of her and
say/ “My Lady”. ”
Thomas’ poem reflects a conversational and honest
tone which is notably his hallmark. “Instructions for Your New
Osiris” is a great example of skillful writing about a very
personal experience. This denouncement of a once loving muse
also conjures the ancient Egyptian myth of Osiris; a tale where
the protagonist’s physical vessel is captured, transformed,
erected, and shattered because of his brother Typhon’s
jealousy. A clever conceit future suitors of the poem’s
‘Isis’ may want to carefully consider.
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Full
Text of Poem
Instructions
for Your New Osiris
By Lorenzo Thomas
Canopic
old Egyptian jugs,
The jars in her boudoir hold me.
Or used to
Since she's moved them
Put them in her bag
And toted them to her new lover's house
That's
what she throws in my face
Since she no longer holds me
Since she can't stay around
No longer
My
heart's in one
I'm
dead
because no longer does my body hold a heart
Another
holds what's left of pride
The day my best friend laughed dead in my face
Because he knew she was his other best friend's
Lady
Another
holds the essence
Of my self-respect
And still another, all my tenderness
For her
That's
all.
There's nothing left
But dead politeness
Not
even passion left to kick her ass
She
lies progressively to me
Each day, like the difficulty
Of game show questions
A little bitter more ridiculous each time
And unbelievable
Where
is Gene Rayburn? Adrienne Barbeau?
George Gobel? Wally Cox? Familiar faces of the afternoon
Clifton Davis? Margaret Daniels?
It seems I just don't understand this show.
Lying,
she cheats
In
front of my face, behind my back
It doesn't matter
The only novelty is tonight's choice
A movie with my girlfriend
Got a date, I really didn't think you'd be in town
Don't hate me do you? Please
don't hate me please
I'm sorry, but I didn't think you'd mind
Of how she wants to let me know
We're through
When I was still alive,
before I knew
The full name of the door,
I used to speak of her and say
"My Lady" |
Source:
Chances Are Few * *
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Van G. Garrett, a writer,
photographer, and teacher from Houston, TX can best be described
as a “contemporary courier of creativity.”
Garrett, a 1999 graduate of Houston Baptist University,
has a BA in English (with an emphasis in creative writing) and
Mass Media (with an emphasis in print) which he has utilized as
demonstrated by his various publications and honors.He was awarded the Danny Lee Lawrence prize
for poetry in 1999, a 2002 Callaloo
Creative Writing Fellowship for poetry, and his poems have
appeared in Rolling Out,
Life Imitating Art, Swirl,
Drumvoices Review, Curbside
Review, Shanks’ Mare, Urban Beat,
E! Scene and
elsewhere. His photography has appeared in Source, has been contracted by Capitol Records, and has been on
display at the Museum of Fine Arts of Houston.
v.g.garrett@usa.net
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1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus
Created
By Charles C. Mann
I’m
a big fan of Charles Mann’s previous
book
1491:
New Revelations of the Americas Before
Columbus, in which he
provides a sweeping and provocative
examination of North and South America
prior to the arrival of Christopher
Columbus. It’s exhaustively researched
but so wonderfully written that it’s
anything but exhausting to read. With
his follow-up,
1493, Mann has taken it to a
new, truly global level. Building on the
groundbreaking work of Alfred Crosby
(author of
The Columbian Exchange and, I’m
proud to say, a fellow Nantucketer),
Mann has written nothing less than the
story of our world: how a planet of what
were once several autonomous continents
is quickly becoming a single,
“globalized” entity.
Mann not only talked to countless
scientists and researchers; he visited
the places he writes about, and as a
consequence, the book has a marvelously
wide-ranging yet personal feel as we
follow Mann from one far-flung corner of
the world to the next. And always, the
prose is masterful. In telling the
improbable story of how Spanish and
Chinese cultures collided in the
Philippines in the sixteenth century, he
takes us to the island of Mindoro whose
“southern coast consists of a number of
small bays, one next to another like
tooth marks in an apple.” We learn how
the spread of malaria, the potato,
tobacco, guano, rubber plants, and sugar
cane have disrupted and convulsed the
planet and will continue to do so until
we are finally living on one integrated
or at least close-to-integrated Earth.
Whether or not the human instigators of
all this remarkable change will survive
the process they helped to initiate more
than five hundred years ago remains,
Mann suggests in this monumental and
revelatory book, an open question. |
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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update 8 July 2008
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