The Poetry of John Pursley III

“He went to the kitchen for water, for air, for the screws that tightened in his chest, & when he returned it was if she had diminished to a viceroy of herself, nothing he could do now, nothing to be said to set things right, nothing rational, except to internalize; she was beautiful & he smiled, cupped her in the small of his hand, mouthed meaningless words, & as if the world couldn’t end, or quite possibly exist, he swallowed her like a tiny tule boat, as if to preserve, or to release, something of her, to feel her soft dissolve into the tongue, her sweetness, her commensurate leaving.”–by John Pursley III

Speculative Friction

By Claire Bateman

Poet John Pursley III. (Photo: Sarah Blackman.)

GREENVILLE South Carolina—(Hubris)—August/September 2024—John Pursley III teaches contemporary literature and poetry at Clemson University, where he also directs the annual Clemson Literary Festival. He is the author of the poetry collection, If You Have Ghosts (Zone 3 Press), as well as the chapbooks A Story without Poverty (South Carolina Poetry Initiative) and A Conventional Weather (New Michigan Press), among others. In addition, he is an assistant editor of the South Carolina Review. His poems and reviews have appeared in Poetry, AGNI, Colorado Review, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere.

Pursley writes, “As someone burdened/blessed with a heavily critical, editorial mind, I find that too much intentionality hinders my creative ability to generate new work, which has always been the story of my writing life. I work hard not to overanalyze what it is that I’m doing as a poet and artist and to allow my creative mind the leeway to function without the constraint of viewing the work as a product before it can be a process. I am currently working on a book-length-poem that follows several very strict, self-imposed, formal, and structural limitations. That kind of formal constraint or prescription is another way I distract my editorial mind long enough to allow my creative mind to play within the framework I’ve constructed for it. It has been a very rewarding, although also at times trying, endeavor. However, the technicality of the formal limitations can also make the writing a painfully slow process.

“These poems were written at different points over my writing career, but the through line to them all is that they were attempts to step outside what I consider to be my curated poetic voice by means of fragmentation, or nods to the surreal; means I rarely employ naturally. I like to think of them as little bursts of energy that rise from the subconscious mind. Little stabs at bringing new life to the page. Smaller in scope, but fully alive because they grow from a different well than something like the narrative span of a book-length endeavor. Some of them are more successful than others.”

After the Gold Rush

When I was born
They said I should

Have a sister

Fifteen seconds later
I had a sister

They laid us out
Like corn

Pulled & stretched
Our arms

Said this is yours

This is yours

Hum of halogen
Click luminary

So many halos

So many hollows
Hidden

The eye
And the spleen

Like large
Carnivorous birds

Late night
Gentle whir of wipers

Always the turning
And returning

Always the gentle
Fracture of the streetlights

The quick click of a door
The slow walk of steps

Echoing along hallways

Return to the house
The childhood home

Impossible

To begin
At the beginning

Unfortunate sad hours

Sad clocks tick ticking
My mother

Always older
Says something

Of the Shermans
Their field’s

Return to native

Prairie grass
Says

The grocery doesn’t
Carry tahini

Perhaps we should make
The potatoes wedges

(“After the Gold Rush” was previously published in Country Dog Review.)

Commensuration & Slow Dissolve

When the walls would turn, we’d disappear, we’d disappear she said, though she had meant to reappear as something else, something different than what they were, & she slept with the usual concerns—his arm, cocked-crooked beneath the soft friction of her breasts. The headlight’s loom—left to right—quick along the walls, their irregular rhythms, circular, confused: He imagined they were lost teens who’d pulled into the cul-de-sac to turn around, & fell to sleep thinking of their bodies. And when he awoke, she was missing an arm, & he was surprised, but more so that he hadn’t noticed before. It was a Saturday, & she was fixing toast. She rose to meet him, took him round the shoulder, said “good morning,” & he smiled. Her thin frame, a near seamless hull of hips & thighs: She seemed smaller, more beautiful than ever, & he took her there, in the easement between the couch & kitchen. But in the shower, he could think only of her awkwardness, the unequivocal way she moved her body, like a long shadow of clouds; & still, there was a certain newfound sense of excitement about her, unfamiliar, yet foundational, as mortar on brick, or the window, through which he watched her slow waltz across the yard was she leaving? settle among the puckered gladiolus, her body bent to bring them in. He dressed quickly & ran to her & she reached for him like a child, or a body on a battlefield, straining at last to lift itself, or be lifted, but without the contempt, without the raw emotion of it. He pulled her to him, & the grass snapped back into shapely spears absorbing the small indentation of her body, & he both loved & hated her, in her slow decline, her disfiguring was she shrinking? into the distance: It was easier this way, her smallness, almost painless, to watch her lethargic dissolve. She seemed helpless, & yet calm, so at ease with it all. And he laid her upon a pillow, & she looked at him as she hadn’t in years, as if he’d done some great deed, as if her prince had come to kneel before her bed. And an ample sorrow for her, for himself, swept him, a feeling he couldn’t quite contain or wrap his arms around. He went to the kitchen for water, for air, for the screws that tightened in his chest, & when he returned it was if she had diminished to a viceroy of herself, nothing he could do now, nothing to be said to set things right, nothing rational, except to internalize; she was beautiful & he smiled, cupped her in the small of his hand, mouthed meaningless words, & as if the world couldn’t end, or quite possibly exist, he swallowed her like a tiny tule boat, as if to preserve, or to release, something of her, to feel her soft dissolve into the tongue, her sweetness, her commensurate leaving.

(“Commensuration & Slow Dissolve” was previously published in Crying Sky.)

Perhaps, Body

If time were ever
Lasting and endless

Mornings unfolded
Languid like

The dog-
Eared tongues

Of books, perhaps

Even the persimmons
Would taste

As sweet—

All succulence

& green

Rush of elbows.

(“Perhaps, Body” was previously published in BlazeVox.)

Three Photographs, July 4, 1928

Maybe sixteen, seventeen, my great grandmother
Straddles the hood of a Model A, her black brogans

Propped between headlights, socks, striped red
Or blue? & white, pulled to the knees. Her hair, dark,

Bobbed in a garçonne, cuts just above the shirt’s
Small collar, which she has relaxed about her throat,

And now flirts between clavicles, knees still locked
Like a lady—though she is awkward, & angular,

Alone for the first time with this boy, who reloads
The camera, as if he can preserve something of her smile,

Which fails,—which opens nervously now, into
Something she hadn’t foreseen, the way these weeds

In their tiny blue explosions, must brush against
The bumper, & seem less like weeds to her today.

And now, blushing, her body folds in on itself, as if
Maybe he has told a joke, or mimics this strange man

They have stumbled upon, who has driven to this park,
Outside what I imagine is Philadelphia, & now perches

On the roof of his car like some prehistoric bird,
His back turned, but clearly there, in each picture,

Staring off into a distant grove of trees
As if he’s forgotten what small favor they’ve asked

Of him, or thought to remove himself, however briefly,
From their lives, to give them a moment alone,

Or maybe take the picture of the two together, riding
The hood of a new Ford, the boy’s pale arms wrapped

Tight around her waist, his hair slicked to one side,
Her hand, now, cupped lightly around his . . .

No. This man knows it, leans forward—as if in a painting—
Away from the camera & echoes the angle of her legs.

(“Three Photographs, July 4, 1928” was previously published in 88: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry.)

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