The Hanging Man
By Joanna Grant
April 15, 2024
April 15, 2024
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I was too young, for a start.
Not even a man at all—a girl, Short for my age, if not small, out in the back yard hauling, hauling the heavy baskets back and forth from washer to clothesline, their plastic rims cutting into my red-raw hands. The old rope ran from the thick grey oak to the scrawny pines at the back of the lot where the dumped raked-up leaves piled up year after year next to the compost heap, a burial ground of old garden scraps and deceased pets. To pin the fitted and flat sheets, the towels, the greying cloth diapers to the line I had to drag a stepstool through the red dirt—tug, thump, leap of faith up, up, hands to the sky, dazzle of North Georgia sun in my eye, snag of the pins in the cloth, down and back again, end to end. When the dirt dipped a bit under the line I strained, up on tiptoes, fingertips trawling the air for a touch of the rope—once the stool tipped out from under me, and there by the grip of one hand I hung, shoulder screaming, strength born of shock, of surprise, legs kicking, child body juddering—in the jolt of that moment time seemed to open, as if I could see, could retrace all the old dreams, the spoiled plans, the rotted old hopes salted into that ground encircled by our rusty old fence, each flaking link part of the chain binding past to present, future to now, until finally my body’s howls let me let go, dropping down, down, of the earth once more but not quite this earth, no longer bound. In that moment determined to find my way out, all the ways to use my old pain, all that I had learned, all that I’d found. |
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Joanna Grant has lived and worked in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia for many years. She teaches college classes to deployed American soldiers deployed overseas. To date, she has taught in Japan, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Djibouti, South Korea, Jordan, Bahrain, and Qatar. Living “away” for so long has complicated her ideas of what home means, in optimistic as well as bittersweet ways. Her most recent poetry collection is Adrift from Alien Buddha Press.
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Author's Note:
As I mention in my short bio, I teach college classes to deployed American soldiers. These include writing classes of all kinds, public speaking, and my favorite, Mythology. I’ve loved the Greek myths since I was little, and teaching this material to others hungry for these stories has deepened my knowledge of comparative traditions and given me a lot to work with in my own writing. It’s hard to read so much about archetypes and the Hero’s Journey and not have it seep into your imagination. So many of the most famous myths involve education, initiation, and transformation. It’s hard not to wonder how these themes play out in your own life and experiences. Additionally, I found myself rereading Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and watching the Netflix adaptation of his novel. One of my favorite aspects of both the novel and the series is the retelling of how different traditions/gods/goddesses found their way to America. Of course, I watched out for mine—the illiterate Irish servant girl transported for theft who made good. A lot of that recognition found its way into my “Imbolc, 2024” poem. Education is often painful, and that kind of initiation features in my poem “The Hanging Man,” which is a kind of gender-flipped reboot of one of the famous Norse myths involving Odin’s quest for knowledge.