Before coming to the MFA program at UMASS Amherst, I worked at a rural public library. One of my tasks was to periodically weed through books in the children's room that no longer circulated. In one afternoon, I looked up the meager statistics of the presidential biography series, swept each and every one off the shelf, deleted their records from the catalog, aggressively stamped "DISCARD" on their endpages, and stacked them in no order on a book sale cart in the basement, to be sold for a dime. This is standard procedure for every book we deleted, but the thrill of this act has stuck with me and now when I am feeling so tired of this mess we’re in I try to remember The Day I Deleted The Presidents.
Another cure for feeling hopeless in the face of patriarchy is reading defiant/revolutionary writings and knowing that they are being read and shared by others. “Native of Heaven” by Emily Hunt appears in the first pages of jubilat 26 and is that kind of poem you want broadcasted everywhere.
At the request of Emily Pettit, jubilat's incredible and very wise Publisher, Hunt went on to make a video of "Native of Heaven" in which a recording of the poem plays over a procession of presidential portraits, much like the ones found on the covers of those dusty, unread biographies I was so ready to be done with.
Being glared at by these textbook portraits of men while listening to Hunt's poem is amazing.
Emily Hunt: Native of Heaven from jubilat on Vimeo.
It’s a challenge to divide our attention away from what we accept to see everyday, and to instead listen and engage with the unseen voices that chip away at dismantling the messed up systems in our brains and in our daily lives and in the rotten, groping powers that lust for even more control. I feel such gratitude for this poem's ability to place the reader right here in our complicated, disastrous reality and to simultaneously incite reconceptions of the future. I feel it all— protest against the patriarchy, inexhaustible sorrow and dismay at what has happened and what has failed to happen, awe and respect for Hunt's ability to voice this looming reality alongside the particularities of daily experience. All while wielding lyrical lines and direct political address with great agility.
"Native of Heaven" as understated poetic manifesto dismantles and subverts historically exclusive, presidential speech. It is the kind of poem we need, and I'm so glad to share it here.
—
NATIVE OF HEAVEN
by Emily Hunt
What if we had
a female president
right here on the ground
in 2014.
Would they make jokes about her blood on SNL?
Or compare her shocking term
to the spacious cycle of a lily?
Would hate or pity win?
I guess I don't want to do it
but I would like
dental insurance.
I care about my skull.
What if when I got my check
it was a decent portion
of a full year's salary
marking with the strength of math
every hour I'd spent
teaching children how to read.
Every winter in our world
I could use that money
to pay for my heat.
So sheepishly
raised by the dead
and dying men
I might step into
high hot water
and wait for spring.
Even once it drained
there wouldn't be much
space for someone else.
Opaque in my periphery
might stand steadily
the shapes of houses, settled sky,
ice crystals, concrete
grains and flowers,
clean April wind,
and my leaders, so good
at shutting doors.
What if my kid grew up in this
a little dead between the categories?
Is it not strange that man –
with the pages of history spread out before him –
is so slow to admit
the intellectual power,
the moral heroism of woman,
and her identity with himself.
If we could first know where we are
we could then better judge
what to do, and how to do it.
It will become all one thing
or all the other.
Where is the broad and generous confidence
in the efficiency of true
democratic institutions?
You cannot deny one class
the full measure of their natural rights
without imposing restraints
upon your own liberty.
These things were said by
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Abraham Lincoln,
and Carl something a century and a half ago.
Ten years later
Lincoln's long gone clamor
went wandering to claim that
the mystic chords of memory
stretching from every battlefield
and patriot grave, to every living heart
and hearthstone, all over this
broad land will yet swell
the chorus of the Union
when again touched, as surely they will be
by the better angels of our nature,
but I don't think it happened.
A few days ago
one of my students
argued against equal pay
while I stood in front of him.
The girl to his right
apologized after class
for being such an airhead.
When I was 14, this girl my age
was raped at school
and in the morning
they announced it.
She was called a liar and a dumb slut.
She transferred and I ran into her.
Maybe she'll be president.
It might be sort of like
how it is now
except we'd have a woman show the way
while we listened to her speak.
—
Emily Hunt is a poet and artist living in San Francisco. Her first book, Dark Green, is just out from SONG CAVE.
This series is curated by Halie Theoharides, managing editor of jubilat.