Author Archives: Claire Bateman

“When/Gullah/Geechee folk/meet at the sto’/they speak about how/to cook stone ground grits right./That 2:1 ratio./Instant is like the biblical/abomination. That ratio/reveals itself in refined spaces too/like/cheer squads . . . .”— Yvettte Murray Speculative Friction By Claire Bateman GREENVILLE South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—1 July 2021—Poet Yvette R. Murray received her BA in English from Duquesne University […]

“For once we’ll write a poem again to wrens to dales to does/to all the things that cannot read a page but read the loam,/the air flush inside their nares, the undulating atoms waving over/an architecture of feathers.”—Sarah McCartt-Jackson Speculative Friction By Claire Bateman GREENVILLE South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—May 1, 2021— Kentucky poet, educator, and folklorist […]

“We can eat contraband creek shrimp and Vicodin,/drink oysters steeped in white lightning./I can show you houses in glory and in decay,/show you pelicans above and dolphins below/our seven black rivers that flash/their bright inscriptions through the dark./I can present you at the court of Queen Skreet./Everyone will lose their illusions/and look for better ones, […]

“For such gifts, love (forgiving/their cost, and your digs at performers’ egos, and in hommage/to whatever shakes you wakeful at four a.m./on a May morning to gather a birdsong barrage)/I will bend my bony knees, while I am able,/to the chilly and unforgiving floors of churches/with patience, gaffer tape, and a hundred feet of cable./Wired […]

“Maybe he believed that seeing well/adds being to our brief/reservoir, our breviary./Not that sight is prayer, or memory/faith. Maybe attention is:/a long look at silver maple leaves’ downy/undersides, blue silver like snow-fox,/but duller, animates the downside.”—Mary Barbara Moore Speculative Friction By Claire Bateman GREENVILLE South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—1 December 2020—Mary B. Moore’s newest collection, Dear If, is due […]

“It’s a warm December in Washington,/a few days before Christmas, the slaughterhouse/of men quiet, those around the lieutenant general/eager to repeat news of victory they know comes/at a price, even if the war is just and Honest Abe/a liberator. A woman asks, Are you him, really?”—Roy Bentley Speculative Friction By Claire Bateman GREENVILLE South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—1 […]

“I’m preaching to myself, he would say, as if the belief that the grace of a common bread was easier for us to comprehend than the oracle of his mouth; that his humanity be acceptable in our sight; that we forgive his inability to live out the words on our behalf. We believers in the […]

“We need a designated verb tense for this indeterminate present. What day is this, we wonder, what month? The one thing we’re not foggy about, however, is the time. You’d think that the presence of sorrow and danger everywhere would have a galvanic effect, but here in 2020, it’s always exhaustion o’clock, as though the […]

“Allergic to their stings, you see my words as bees./For all their softness, you see something hidden./They ask for what you can but will not give: a child,/And hidden in the mildness of my flesh you see the threat . . . .”—Elizabeth Boleman-Herring Speculative Friction By Claire Bateman GREENVILLE South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—April 2020—Elizabeth Boleman-Herring, […]

“Our masters and almost friends,/in lab coats and white Cossack smocks,/floated like ghosts across the hillside,/holding our leashes, staring blindly/at the lens./Sniffing, loafing, eager, and at ease,/everything excited us!”—By Richard St. John Speculative Friction By Claire Bateman GREENVILLE South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—February 2020—Richard St. John is the author of Each Perfected Name (Truman State University Press, 2015), The Pure Inconstancy of […]