“Sycorax” by A. Van Jordan (poetry, ’98)

An excerpt from the poem “Sycorax” by A. Van Jordan (poetry, ’98) published at The Cortland Review

 

 

Sycorax

Young, Pregnant, on the Run
March 5, 2012

One might call my fleeing an expatriation, but it simply was a psychic escape, a way to free the mind to allow the body to follow suit. Then, just as I came to feel good about myself, my seducer said, You won’t make it out there, as I waved goodbye, already beyond his reach. With no confusion about what I felt, his words rang discordant: As a distant observer, I wonder, how does one perceive a hand waving goodbye? One of those gestures read, from a distant gaze, as either a great sadness or quiet ecstasy, the goodbye; either the tearful end or a fresh beginning. From a distance, one never knows whether one simply needs a bit of time away or if they are, in fact, escaping some oppression. All of these can be true within the waver of the hand. In that sense, a good goodbye should begin with a yearning. Even at the outset, the desire to return to, or, just as easily, of getting beyond the grasp of another can come from within us—springing from the same neuroscience of the mind. Escaping can be as intoxicating as the initial longing to couple with another.

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