"Dignity is Not an Easy Acquisition" by Judy McAmis
The Gnostic Gospels No.5 -- a new poem by a Holy Gossiper.
Colin and I were so happy to have Judy McAmis at our Holy Gossip retreat at my house in Scarborough, Maine, last summer. We’re honored to be able to publish her new poem.
Dignity is Not an Easy Acquisition
by Judy McAmis Like an oyster I was split open, shucked my very first time unexpected and raw. Maraschino rivulets on the rocks, like the time I fell and split my knee wide open on the jetty. Once broken, the hymen is irreparably damaged, ruptured like my marriage years later like I believed for so long I was too. An oyster without a pearl sullied by a leftover piece of sand. The oyster needs grit and time to turn out a pearl. Once formed the pearl is ready for exaltation.
Successfully transmuting personal pain into a piece of art is no mean feat. We are compelled by the manner in which the hard concision of language creates a conduit for the difficult emotions of McAmis’s poem. The unfolding of the extended simile beautifully balances an aching inevitability with astonishment. Notice the work done by that one word “unexpected;” and how the lines that follow (lines containing the poem’s least figurative imagery—“split my knee wide open on the jetty”) compound the pain we’ve been asked to witness. In the oyster and pearl, McAmis finds images that allow her to render not one but three experiences that haunts her speaker, all while crafting a compressed and devastating experience for the reader. Note, however, that there is nothing gratuitous about the poem’s trauma. For the reader to enter this poem and then emerge from it intact enacts catharsis for both speaker and reader. That is the work and the gift of this poem.
Judy McAmis is a poet, yoga instructor, sound healer, and wild spirit. Her work is heavily influenced by feminist principles, characters she has met in real life or by other circumstances, the occult, and the mythological diaspora. Judy graduated from the Stonecoast MFA program at the University of Southern Maine in 2021. She has published poems in Deraciné, ParABnormal Magazine, Enheduanna Vol. 6, The Banshee: The Leading Magazine for Women who Scream Vol. 2, The Banyan Review, Pensive Literary Journal, and Ghost City Press. She has attended Cambridge Writers Workshop, Elk River Writer’s Conference, and Holy Gossip Writer’s Workshop. Judy is currently working on a chapbook and full-length poetry manuscript.
Judy’s fine title is the poem’s silver tray. She owns it now. I love all the work this poem lays out so generously for us, its readers. Admiration! Thanks for this post.
What a stunner!