Hail My Attention Kindly, the fourth collection of lyric and narrative poetry by Stephen Roger Powers, is a sweeping and bewitching tour through India, Ireland, Jekyll Island, New York City, London, Berlin, Hawaii, the Northwoods of Wisconsin, and, of course, the musical and sparkly world of Dolly Parton. Powers’ voice is both droll and pensive as it explores wanderlust and the majesty and power of the natural world. In their twists and turns of language and imagery, these poems also delve into disability, loss, and resistance to nationalism and dogma. Like one of Dollywood’s award-winning rollercoasters, the poetry in Hail My Attention Kindly leaves the reader jolted, breathless, windswept, and wanting to go around again.
Praise for Stephen Roger Powers
“…funny and celebratory.”
Matthew Gilbert The Boston Globe
“…distinctive, flavor-filled, driven work.”
Russell Gardner Jr. Verse Wisconsin
“Aiming to tell an offbeat and original story, [Powers] brings readers a unique brand of poetry that hasn’t been seen much before. The Follower’s Tale is a choice pick for poetry lovers, highly recommended.”
Midwest Book Review
“The poems do not sound like they are conventional poetry.”
Books Ireland
“Not only does Powers entrance us with his humorous word-pictures, but the imagery and words he uses make us feel like he himself is writing songs to the reader, creating rhythms and roller-coasters of surprising word phrases that continue to draw us in line by line…”
Sandra Cohen Margulius the museum of americana
“Powers’ poems are not an escape from reality; rather, they detail the sad ache of nostalgia and the beauty of somehow knowing, even in one’s golden years, that the tarnish is inevitable and possibly already there.”
Chase Dimock As It Ought to Be Magazine
“Powers’ poems are intelligent and good-hearted. They’re funny, alive, and also capable of profound anger or quiet meditation.”
Shawn Delgado storySouth
Travel Instills in Me a Certain Kind of Faith
I.
Johnny Cash said he could wake up
in his tour bus, look out, and pinpoint where
he was to within five miles. I cannot believe that,
but don’t tell me he didn’t believe the honesty
in the train’s wail over there worming
across the field like a cast-iron necklace.
He wrote songs about those songs.
II.
A town labeled Paw Paw on a map is most likely
called something else by the locals, but at least
trust the light in mid-December,
the way it tans the windburned stubble
on the cheek of Illinois, where shadows
of windmill blades sweep like razors,
which you shouldn’t deny are sharp.
III.
I believe the politeness
shown by travelers speaking
a foreign language, the way they stop
and start and search and ask in their smiles
to please understand them. No one
talks that politely in a native
one, so if you hail my attention
kindly in yours I will not believe you.
IV.
Spend five euros for an Inis Beer in a pub
on Inisheer that lacks a James Joyce Pub Award.
Do not spend seven dollars for a Guinness
in a Jekyll Island sports bar that hopes
you will believe its James Joyce Award
plaque by the front door is genuine.
V.
The easiest thing for me to believe is
the missing O in an abandoned motel’s sign
near Las Cruces. I believe the tumbleweeds
stuck in all the open doors there. I sometimes hear opera
in an airplane’s cabin noise. I want to always trust
an imagination that makes music from that.
* * *
My Hearing Aids Hear Ruby and Rupee Exactly the Same
I was once so broke I had no choice
but to eat rice that bugs died in.
I couldn’t help thinking about it
one time in India when my car broke down
outside a village. Children suddenly
surrounded it, peered in the windows.
I’d run out of rupees in Agra,
so an hour back I’d had none
for the boy attending the washroom
at a roadside hotel selling onion basmati rice.
The children begged me to take
their pictures. My phone was like a ruby
they passed around; their faces smiled
at their faces on my screen.
The driver fixed the flat,
and the children chased us
until they disappeared in our dust.
* * *
Hail My Attention Kindly
Every never mind is a cigarette burn
in my backseat because, like truckers who toss
glowing butts that land in passing convertibles,
the most obnoxious and insensitive are the hearing.
When I mispronounce words for fun, the loudest
objections also come from the hearing, who will
correct herbal with an H or term rick for turmeric,
oblivious to their biggest handicap, missing the joke
of language. My hearing aids hear barker and burger
the same. On the lips there is no difference between
journey and sure did. Last summer a lost shopper
asked where she could find Booja-Booja,
which are vegan chocolate truffles,
but I thought she wanted bookshop-bookshop.
“Never mind,” she said.
Is it a mom & mom store or a pop & pop store?
A cochlear implant is a coconut cream pie.
A man I know goes by the nickname Chitty,
but I call him Shitty. Shitty-Shitty-Bang-Bang.
Every Patrick is Patrique because why not?
Though I was reading her lips and paying
attention kindly, a tourist I encountered stopped
mid-sentence to spell a word she assumed
I didn’t hear—bog? B-O-G? bog?—and she repeated
another word—perfumery?—while pidgin sign language
spritzed herself. The hearing turn a lot of statements
into questions. The hearing are clueless how to get
the attention of someone hard of hearing.
God Bless America is gobbles America,
though godless America is how it should be.
I’ve been told to pray if I want to hear.
In an old Buick that was a boat,
my grandmother taught me to navigate
so I would never have to stop for directions.
Her compass points were orange town glow
reflected by low October clouds. My grandfather
insisted switching on the dome
light was illegal, so I couldn’t read her lips
in the night-highway backseat, but I was able to guess
she was saying “Spencer is over there”
and “Those are the lights of Stratford.”
I wanted to know if stars were still above
the clouds. An Italian doctor who learned English
as a second language accommodates me
the most kindly. Every time the motion-control
light switches off and shrouds his patio in darkness,
he gets up and dances to turn it back on
so I can stay on course in the conversation.
The above poems are Copyright © Stephen Roger Powers
