Alex Grant
While I don't consciously set out to write from a gender-specific standpoint, many of my poems tend to focus on the age-old subjects - war, intolerance, absurdity - situations and events which tend to be male-dominated - so the poems often end up being peopled primarily by male characters - though I think the sensibility of many of the poems tends to be gender-neutral.
Captain Scott's Lost Diary
“I’m just going outside, and may be some time”
- Captain Oates
Six weeks in this tent, and we are all close
to breaking-point. Captain Oates masturbates
constantly - even during dinner – he claims
it’s simply a mechanism to keep his body temperature
up - though we all have our doubts. I no longer feel
comfortable shaking hands with him, and last night
he told me that he wants me to have his babies.
He insists on calling me “Falcon”, though he knows
I detest my middle name. The natural order of things
seems to be breaking down – the men have begun
to question his authority of late, especially since
the unfortunate frozen-yogurt incident. My dear
wife is constantly in my thoughts – though Captain
Oates has taken to wearing a wig he made from
a penguin-skin, and insisting, in a ridiculous
falsetto impersonation of Mary, that I take him
to dinner at Claridge’s. This strikes me as conduct
unbecoming of an English hero, but I find myself
strangely attracted by his buffoonish attempts at
humor, and on two occasions, have had to physically
restrain myself from mentioning his efforts
in dispatches. The wind is unrelenting, the cold
bites at every nerve, and Oates has threatened
that if we don’t go to dinner soon, he’ll go alone -
and that he may be gone for quite some time.
First Published in Connecticut Review, 2005.
Alex Grant’s chapbook Chains & Mirrors(NCWN/Harperprints) won the 2006 Randall Jarrell Poetry Prize and the 2007 Oscar Arnold Young Award(Best North Carolina poetry collection). His full-length collection, Fear of Moving Water, a finalist for a number of national book contests, has just been released by Wind Publications. A recipient of the Kakalak Anthology of Carolina Poets Prize and The Pavel Srut Poetry Fellowship, his poems have appeared in many national journals, including The Missouri Review, Smartish Pace, Best New Poets 2007, Arts & Letters, Margie and The Connecticut Review. He lives in Chapel Hill, NC, with his wife, his dangling participles and his Celtic fondness for excess. He can be found on the web at www.redroom.com/author/alex-grant.