{Nathan Spoon
✦Poems}
When I am writing poems, I experience time as elastic
(as I do when I’m not writing poems).
I grew up as a multiply-disabled child in a rural setting. (ADHD, autism, dyscalculia, dyslexia, etc.) I loved spending time in nature, observing things and watching the cycles and seasons. I also loved learning, but had a difficult time in school. I was undiagnosed until adulthood with the above ways of being. Because being autistic in particular means being a very different sort of person, I was bullied horribly. Over time, I began to really appreciate the small number of people who noticed and talked to me in friendly and kind ways. I knew I wanted to be that sort of person too. I wanted to take time for people who are overlooked. I also knew I wanted to understand the people who were acting unkindly.
A Candle in the Night
Stone is tender
to lichen.
Lichen is tender
to the earth and its other
inhabitants. What are
you and I tender to?
When a black hole
swallows a star,
it must do so
tenderly, since
a universe hinges
on tenderness.
At midnight
your candle burns
with tenderness,
dream-like in an amber
votive, its flame
flickering tenderly.
Untitled
Begin the way you end i say to myself in
crowded rooms Then i remember how
a picture of a monster is worth a thousand
teeth marks I open my umbrella then
close it in a singular motion eliciting an
aww instead of the wow i hope for So
i will begrudgingly leave the legacy others
may have desired There are many reasons
to be proud of things imposed almost by
circumstance They are each so beautiful
on careful inspection that i could open
a notebook and weep while reading the
words of strangers Thank you i say
to clouds of imaginary grasses billowing
around me the flowers of their living flesh
{pause}
Early on in my poetry journey, I spent a year writing only haiku. The form is both simple (‘a seasonal poem / of seventeen syllables-- / balanced on a pause’) and inexhaustible. As I went back to writing non-haiku poems, the thing that stuck with me was this quality of putting pieces of language together in relation to a pause. By bringing this technique to other forms of poetry, I found that it fits broadly with the collage aesthetic that has been common to poetry since the advent of literary modernism.
I learned from another haiku poet that the pause, which usually comes after the first five syllables, divides the poem into two parts that are like a big stone and a little stone. I learned that the moment of arranging the two stones in relation to the pause can be elastic in a very calm, centering, contemplative way. I think this is something that gives a different quality to my poems. ~Nathan
Pink Notebook Sonnet
One or another of us always seems
to be fumbling in solitude Some days
it admittedly is me I mean all that alters
the sunlight falling now to water my bodily
roots is atmosphere is air I could ask
who is looking but to what purpose when
the palmed sea slug of my heart lost among
waves is opening a window or a random text
It is easy to be prepared for what comes next
when there is more really than I can say See
friend this is my scar and this is my scar
and this leaving me some days grieving
and proud that who I am is what constellations
within the entire sky stand and even stand up for
Starfish-like
i fell out of the breath of my longer
breath as you did It is wonderful to
consider while sitting in a folding chair
this morning on the porch Spotting
the sallying scarlet of a tanager i feel
like i never fell like i will be inhabiting
this form forever even as i know this
is untrue There are always new ways
morphology in the moment is moving
There are always gourds ripening on
vines as honey oozes repeatedly
between the threads of a cloth being
twisted around pieces of honeycomb
tighter and tighter before you know it
{vast}
One big thing about how my brain works is that it is jumpy. If I am expected to stay on topic to respond to a question or talk about a specific thing, this expectation often sends my thinking into association mode. As I try keeping focus, my mind floods with memories that can combine into clusters, lifting toward the imaginal realm.
I love the language of poetry so much because, when writing it, I can let my mind relax and travel anywhere. There is no expectation, and out of this I find everything coming together so much more easily. Many things cycle through my poems, including the seasons, the elements, time, the small, and the vast, and more.
About Nathan
I am an autistic poet with a bouquet of other cognitive disabilities and a clinical assessment of low academic fluency. After graduating high school, I began studying poetry and philosophy independently.
In addition to reading, writing poems, writing about poems, and walking in nature, I love making art, including paintings, drawings, collages, and hand-sewn dolls.
Nathan is widely published and is the editor of Queerly, a journal that curates poetry and artwork by queer and neuroqueer contributors. See Nathan’s website for links to his publications.