Kyle Dargan is the author of three collections of poetry, Logorrhea Dementia (2010), Bouquet of Hungers (2007) and The Listening (2003). For his work, he has received the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and grants from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Dargan has partnered with the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities to produce poetry programming at the White House and Library of Congress. He is currently an assistant professor of literature and creative writing at American University and the founder and editor of POST NO ILLS magazine.
Dear Religion
Listen now to something human.
~Li-Young Lee
~Li-Young Lee
First is urge, then the urge to act
upon urge—the former absolute
impulse, so cellular, buried
so far within us that to grope for it
would require we delve
down beyond flesh, threaten
to breach that brisk unknown
for which our bodies serve as dams.
What if it is resonance and not sin
that is original? Each heart pulse,
each lung swell: urge, urge,
urge. Steady and metronomic—
desire’s tempo. Urge: the faint
tapping that knows the body
longs to slow drag, to prance,
boogie.
The righteous choir
chides “all the earth’s surfaces
are not dance floors.” Fine,
but cannot we know restraint
without muting the bottom, corporeal
beat: urge, urge, urge. Our ears
must chew the cud of it—
mastication marking us
not cloven but blessedly human.