Wise Poison

David Rivard writes the story of reality construction in his poems. What it means to be afraid, or defiant, or amazed lies in some combination of happenstance and the story we tell ourselves about who we are, he seems to be saying. Consider, as a case in point, "Any Where Out of the World," in which Rivard describes sweating through a shirt so that the red dye stains his skin at the very moment he first learns of the Jonestown massacre. He writes: "I found my chest & arms tinted / a translucently purplish red / paper towels and liquid soap couldn't scrub off-- / so that the words ... seemed then to have made my body / glow ..." The circumstance of hearing the news at that time alters the experience's meaning. For Rivard, the disaster, born of madness and faith, becomes the story of all human loss and suffering.