Of Tyrant, On Desire

With poems & prompts by Leah Umansky

Is the pursuit of joy an act of resistance? And might following one’s desire enable us to better navigate the horrors of the world?

Leah Umansky is this week’s guest writer.

Leah Umansky is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently, OF TYRANT (Word Works Books 2024.) She earned her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and has curated and hosted The COUPLET Reading Series in NYC since 2011.  She is the creator of the STAY BRAVE Substack which encourages women-identifying creatives to inspire other women-identifying creatives to stay brave in their creative pursuits. Her creative work can be found in such places as The New York Times,  The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A Day, USA Today, POETRY,  and American Poetry Review. She is a writing coach who has taught workshops to all ages at such places as Poetry School London, Poets House, Hudson Valley Writers Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering and elsewhere. She is working on a fourth collection of poems ORDINARY SPLENDOR, on wonder, joy and love, and a YA memoir, OCEANS APART.  She can be found at  www.leahumansky.com, @Lady_bronte on X  or @leah.umansky on IG

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Read Leah’s poems below & then try out her original writing prompts which explore tyranny & desire.

TWO LIVES

Let’s start with the child and use that darling as a device.

A little chaos makes a good story. When it comes to tormented goodness,

Look around. On the F train, I saw a mother and her child lock eyes.

The child pushed through the crowd, her mouth—a harsh parallel,

Her eyes—a controlled earthquake of dread, of fragmented haunting,

Of dense, hard grey stone. Through the rush-hour crowd, she pushed,

As in a solitary migration to her mother, to the door, in an orb of her own,

But I couldn’t hear her words. I only heard the mother, preening, leaning-in

Teaching her daughter to grasp her strength, to clench her fist,

To rise against the spasm of silence. No one could hear the girl

But I saw her push. I saw her strive. Her silence wasn’t learned,

Or practiced, just fell upon, like so much in this life. The mother,

Riddled in grocery bags, errands, sweat and homework, grabbed

Her daughter’s delicate wrist, her breath stood on her chin, her eyes bore

Into her, in nightmare. I felt the invisible line of pain forming around that

Wrist, like a system of star-like bruises, but there were no visible marks.

She said, “Use your words, honey. You’ve got to use your words.”

And in that fog of must, I saw a life outside of this one. A life where daughters

Don’t need such lessons. A seemingly-un-brutal future held up by all of us.

Such lessons would fall away, an escapable pattern of a life gone astray.

If you weren’t paying attention, you might’ve said villain,

Thief, Tyrant, but the word, truth-teller came to my lips.

The rage of that mother, to get her daughter to speak,

To get her daughter to speak loudly, to get her daughter to speak up

Like a boy or a man. Teach the girl what must become innate

And exile forever the faults of this world. Start with what the Tyrant

Loves to throw: his words, his voice, his weight.

-- from OF TYRANT

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DESIRE [EVEN IN THE TIME OF THE TYRANT]

then i am sprawling in through me

then i am fastened into myself

into my points and my pulls

then i am spinning in rev, in stare

it is a stun and a shunning of this life

it is a slutting of this life

it is a spawning of this moment

i am a promise awake with knowing

a pull in a thread

sprawling

a sputtering

a stuttering

a slant

a song

a rising

a falling

a driving to the edge & waiting

a waiting for the edge to fall

an edging closer to the fall

a wanting the fall to crush

and now i am in the fall

i am the fall

i thank the desire

i kiss the desire

i hold the desire

i thumb the desire

i bite the desire

i thrust the desire

i grind the desire

i rub the desire

it is without oars

& sitting

lulling

circling in a pond

it is the wind tracing

the feet of the kicking beneath that surface

the earth beneath sucking & sucking

that filling of the mouth

that shattering of time

i am bringing myself to a standstill

i am allowing the water to spread

i am afloat in the desire

the desire of me

of you

i am pinning myself to the surface

waiting for the moon to fall

longing for the pierce of stars

tonguing the night

brushing away the darkness

til there is light

around

beneath

inside

til my eyes

open

to the white

of the sky

From OF TYRANT.  Originally published at the Academy of American Poets’ poem-a-day

Photo by Chi Pham on Unsplash

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