Home → Take Heart → A Maine Poem
Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry: The Alligator's Hum
Edited and introduced by Wesley McNair, Maine Poet Laureate
Kenneth Rosen of Portland has published numerous collections of poetry, including The Origins of Tragedy, which includes ?The Alligator?s Hum.? The poem brings together alligators, dating and poetry in a combination that makes us rethink all three.
The Alligator?s Hum by Kenneth Rosen
To allure an alligator lady so she?ll allow him To fertilize her eggs before she buries them In her sand nest, the male alligator Hums in a swamp pond like a kid in a bathtub. It hums like a foghorn: Hummmmmm! And raises Queer geysers of water by his torso?s profound Vibrations, these inverted, fragile, almost crystal Chandeliers his obligatto of amor. I have tried this On dates without knowing what I was doing: Hummmmmm! My date pretended she didn?t know What I was doing either and would ask, ?Are you all right?? Hmmmmmm! I?d echo,Something below my solar plexus now governing My lowest, reptilian, ganglion brain. But I swear, Like people who claim they can?t understand poetry, She knew what it meant for the hum of the body To dominate mind, It meant please admire My wet inverted chandeliers, which translates Like all poetry too, into alligator: You can get me, If you let me, you grinning, beautiful primordial swampwater creature you!? Then their tails Slap the water with a belly whomp. They thrash like mad, almost invincible?though the human Eye is never naked?and then it?s over.
Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 2003 by Kenneth Rosen. Reprinted from The Origins of Tragedy, CavanKerry Press, 2003, by permission of Kenneth Rosen. Questions about submitting to Take Heart may be directed to David Turner, Special Assistant to the Maine Poet Laureate, at poetlaureate@mainewriters.org or 207-228-8263.