13/30: John Paul Davis, 30 Poets in Their 30s.

Brevity is overrated. I love a fine tweet as much as the next gal, but occasionally, I wish more poets would dare to be oceanic, to swarm and envelop me with their words instead of throwing a small polished stone in my general direction.

John Paul Davis is a great poet to read in moments like these. There's a Whitmanesque quality to his poems, effusive and generous – and characterized by endless fascination. Like Whitman, Davis is enraptured by the people he encounters, and inspired by them. I first met Davis a few years ago in Chicago: he was my neighbor, and we also worked creatively together. During those times, what always came through for me first was his curiosity about other human beings, how he sparkled and leaned in when he had a question or a quip, and how much he cared about representing the people he knew well. His poems have the same emotive engine: they expand, and thrum.

Davis is a fascinating, underrated poet. Please enjoy this small example of what he can do.

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In Praise Of Loud Women

Starting with the ones at the poetry
open mic shows but not just those under
the spotlight, also the bartender
with the lightning-sharp laughter who hushes
the chattering men camped on barstools
when the next reader taps the microphone
& unfolds the looseleaf from her pocket
& there's the ones with glitter eyeliner
& skin-tight mini skirts on the subway
filling the car with with the nasal music
of their hopes & gossip while we tunnel
beneath the East River toward Brooklyn
& thank you for all of them, they have made
my favorite days like that Saturday
moving from bar to bar with Lynne & Tish
& Syreeta giving me the side eye
& Lizz met us & the stories only got
louder, & I consider myself lucky
to have so often heard Marty's hard-earned
wisdom & prosody reverberate
through an entire room & Rebecca's warm
contralto speaking fragments of Chekhov,
Elizabeth in arms about some new
political injustice on tv
& Chelsy, who bit my wrist to let me
know she liked me & even Alecia
rattling my mobile phone with her anger, her
name will never stop meaning light & could
I have listened to her with more of myself
& Paige, famous for starting arguments
on the internet called me delightful
& Rae's Ohio drawl ricocheting
up & down the river assuring me
I was home & Mahogany's redbone
Oakland syllabics making everything
into song & Emily Rose trying
to talk some sense into my thick head late
on one of those bitterly cold Chicago
nights driving & smoking with the windows
down & Adri coaching me through the grief
when I tell her what the doctors have said
is happening to my stepmother who
could make my short name multisyllabic
when I was not my best self & who taught
me to want to make the good kind of trouble
& she is dying & no one knows how
long she has & this unjust world will lose
her unrepeatable voice, so many
rooms will no long resound when her Southern
vowels crest brightly as she tells some story,
how will the world get by without her faith
& her willingness to take on the small
difficult work that brings about real change
& I don't think I could have become a man
without her, she required grace & patience
& compassion & honesty from me
& what will I do without her to trouble
me & tell me, what trouble can I make
to make & maintain space for such blessed
loudness as hers, promise me that more loud
talking big laughing bold troublemaking
women are stepping in to fill the empty places,
what kind of light can I shine when one such
woman breathes to speak & what kind of ear
should a stubborn know-it-all thick man grow
what kind of silence should I be learning
what kind of silence what kind of silence?

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John Paul Davis is a curator of Page Meets Stage. He was a founding member of Real Talk Avenue, and is the former editor of Bestiary Magazine and Em Literary. He currently lives in Brooklyn. His website is www.johnpauldavis.org

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