"Will You?" by Carrie Fountain

[View this email on a browser]( [Forward to a friend]( [facebook-icon]( [tumblr-icon]( [twitter-icon]( March 13, 2019 [Will You?]( [Carrie Fountain]( When, at the end, the children wanted to add glitter to their valentines, I said no. I said nope, no, no glitter, and then, when they started to fuss, I found myself saying something my brother’s football coach used to bark from the sidelines when one of his players showed signs of being human: oh come on now, suck it up. That’s what I said to my children. Suck what up? my daughter asked, and, because she is so young, I told her I didn’t know and never mind, and she took that for an answer. My children are so young when I turn off the radio as the news turns to counting the dead or naming the act, they aren’t even suspicious. My children are so young they cannot imagine a world like the one they live in. Their God is still a real God, a whole God, a God made wholly of actions. And I think they think I work for that God. And I know they will someday soon see everything and they will know about everything and they will no longer take never mind for an answer. The valentines would’ve been better with glitter, and my son hurt himself on an envelope, and then, much later, when we were eating dinner, my daughter realized she’d forgotten one of the three Henrys in her class. How can there be three Henrys in one class? I said, and she said, Because there are. And so, before bed we took everything out again—paper and pens and stamps and scissors— and she sat at the table with her freshly washed hair parted smartly down the middle and wrote WILL YOU BE MINE, HENRY T.? and she did it so carefully, I could hardly stand to watch. [Like this on Facebook]( [Share via Twitter]( Copyright © 2019 Carrie Fountain. Used with permission of the author. [Fountain reads "Will You?"]( About This Poem “Once I believed to remain true to my art I had to keep the world away. I had to cloister. I remained pure. Of what? Who knows. My feeling of myself as an artist has changed. To remain true to my art, I try to be awake in the world. I try to succumb to it—the glitter, the Henrys, the rude things I find coming out of my mouth—and I try to make something of it. I’m hardly ever alone. As you hear in the recording: my cat came in and meowed. I was going to redo it, but no. I’m no longer interested in purity. That’s part of my art. It stays.” —Carrie Fountain [Carrie Fountain]( Carrie Fountain is the author Instant Winner (Penguin Books, 2014) and Burn Lake (Penguin Books, 2010), selected for the National Poetry Series. She is the writer-in-residence at St. Edward’s University and the host of KUT’s This Is Just to Say. She lives in Austin, Texas. [Instant Winner]( Poetry by Fountain [Instant Winner]( (Penguin Books, 2014) "The Imprint" by Jennifer Moxley [read-more]( "Notes for Further Study" by Christopher Salerno [read-more]( "Peach Woman" by Emily Hunerwadel [read-more]( March Guest Editor: Maggie Smith Thanks to [Maggie Smith](, author of Good Bones (Tupelo Press, 2017), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Read a [Q&A with Smith]( about her curatorial approach this month and find out more about our [guest editors for the year.]( [make a one-time donation]( [make a monthly donation]( [Small-Blue-RGB-poets.org-Logo]( Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit [Poets.org](. You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click [here](. © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038 From Our Sponsors [Advertisement](