Poem of the Week | June 22, 2020

This week’s Poem of the Week is “Rise and Fall of the Tyrant” by Leah Umansky!

Leah Umansky is the author of two full length collections, The Barbarous Century (2018), and Domestic Uncertainties (2013), among others. She earned her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and is the curator and host of The COUPLET Reading Series in NYC. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in such places as POETRY, Guernica, Bennington Review, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, Poetry International, The New York Times, Rhino, and Pleiades. She is resisting the tyrant with her every move. She is #teamstark #teamelliot & #teambernard and can be found at @lady_bronte

Rise and Fall of the Tyrant

I.

There are so many tyrants around us         where the heartache is     the treachery

the fragility         the suggesting        the activating         we hallucinate

we house our anger         we sting the teeming         but obsession overcomes us

like raw flesh         it burns:vibrates::hums         all desire nerves away

all kindness perishes

[The tyrant is everywhere, and one must consider the price of freedom]

The tyrant is at your job
The tyrant follows you home
The tyrant is in your grief
The tyrant is in your longing
The tyrant is in your sick
The tyrant is in your heart
The tyrant is on your train
The tyrant is beneath your earnestly
The tyrant is in your breath
The tyrant is in this poem

II.

She, herself
She, offering
she, she, she, she, she
She tells me
She wishes he would hit her
She tells me
No one has spoken to her like this before
She tells me
The shape
Of his wounds
Of his rage
Of his childness
Of his impossibility
Of his stupor
Of his prickliness
She tells me
She is the destination
Of his anger
Unreasonable
Irrational
Demented
She tells me
She is too strong
She tells me
It is her fault for taking it

I tell her
The tyrant is everywhere
I tell her
She isn’t taking it
She doesn’t believe him
She is just absorbing
Yes, it is maddening
Yes, it is ungodly
Yes, it is unbearable
But he will be taken down
They all will

III.

What
World
What
Scab
What
Voice
Stimulates
Him?
What
Sanity
What
Unraveling
What
Mingling
Seizes
Him?
What
Rulings
What
Justice
What
Rush
Civilizes
Him?

//

I would set fire
To this world
To this life
I would set fire
To these faults
If it meant
The tyrant
Would fall
It if meant
This world
Was not this world
If it meant
This world
Was not
A plaything.
What I want
What I want
More than anything
Is for the tyrant
To leave
Is for the tyrant
To leave my hand
Is for the tyrant
To leave my grip
For the tyrant
To remove
His fangs
From my palm
Is for the tyrant
To let me
Rise
Rise
Rise
Is for the tyrant
To let me rise
From the lonely
Alone.

Author’s Note

“Rise and Fall of the Tyrant,” is a part of my manuscript, OF TYRANT, and one of the last tyrant poems I wrote. At its center is the notion that the tyrant is everywhere. These poems are mostly stewed in politics and our current administration under 45, however, when I looked closer, and paid careful attention to recent conversations I had with friends, I felt heartbroken. I saw the tyrant everywhere: in our personal, our professional and our romantic lives. Their excuses, their rage, their scapegoating, their childish disposition – this is the life of many men and their toxicity, but I wanted to take it back; take it all back, like a re-imagining, or a reenactment of a possible but intangible thing. I said, the tyrant is in this poem, because he is. He is the reason I wrote this poem and that means he, too, is a sadly, a part of you now, and clearly, a part of me. (I hate that but am grateful for the vile I expunged). What I want more than anything is to lose his grip from my mind, my hand, and my heart. I want him to leave me alone, and ultimately, to leave us all alone.