Nick Flynn
Posted in Past Guests | Tagged A–F
Nick Flynn was born and raised in Scituate, Massachusetts. Flynn has written poetry, memoirs, textbooks and a play. His Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir and has been translated into ten languages. His poetry has garnered him the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award in addition to fellowships from The Guggenheim Foundation, The Library of Congress, and The Amy Lowell Trust. Flynn’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, the Paris Review, National Public Radio’s This American Life, and The New York Times Book Review.
jesus knew
unlike you and I jesus knew he’d die
some days a headache woke him it
lingered nothing terrible but the word
hung around his temples like this
soul everyone wants but can’t find jesus
knew he’d die he just didn’t know how
& that bothered him sometimes & then
he’d do one of his little bootleg tricks
what the hell, didn’t hurt anyone
didn’t make anyone disappear for-
ever but the tricks stopped working he forgot
why he did them & what for he confused
a story about a guy named jesus
with a story about a father he never knew
& it all began to hang like a motheaten coat
pulled out of a trunk on shaky days hey let’s
return to the scene of the fucken tragedy at least
we all know how it turns out instead of this end-
less uncertainty hey let’s sell our souls a few
more times no one’s really counting (those
little papers you trade for your sins,
what do you call them? anyone? no?)
—anyway—jesus this jesus that
god of nickel god of dime
right, the real jesus he was lost he walked in-
to the desert not far really his friends his
disciples he told them he’d come back
like us he said this every time he left but jesus
never said wait never pointed to the sky
never claimed he’d rise again never asked us to eat
his flesh jesus never asked anything as far
as I can tell he got tired everyday & then slept
sometimes okay sometimes un-
bearable, the dreams, the father
pointing a finger at everyone a finger we can’t
even look at.
–
From Some Ether (Graywolf Press, 2011)
Links
- Poet’s website
- “‘Being Flynn’:When Dad Needs to Take Shelter,” Interview by Dave Davies. Fresh Air. NPR. 29 February 2012.
- “Another Bullshit Night in Indiana: An Interview with Nick Flynn.” Sycamore Review. 2006.
Media
Seminar with Marie Howe | October 22, 2013
Reading with Marie Howe | October 22, 2013