During the Open Mic portion of this month’s Hoot, Maggie Kemp read an unusual and powerful poem, which she said was inspired by Wallace Stevens’ poem “The Emperor of Ice-Cream”:

The Core of the Navel Crux

                              after Wallace Stevens

Rough bumps of flesh roll down in curves;

peel off the rind, aroma fresh

seeps into nasal pores so deep,

the Fibonacci number parts

symmetric flower petal chic.

Cut off the nub, the sections fall

in clutter lounge the folded tucks.

Your only core is the core of the navel crux.

Smooth skin spreads out on O.R. slab,

legs draped, head cloaked in blue, veiled eyes.

She cannot view the surgeon hack

who mutilates her focal point.

Concentric energy wave-arcs flowed,

now chaos breaks from out the scar.

No central heart, no ring to pluck,

Your only core was the core of the navel crux.

                                            – Maggie Kemp

  Like Stevens’ difficult poem (which is readily available online), several interpretations of Maggie’s poem are possible, and some parts may be a mystery to you, as they are to me. Here are a few of my thoughts and associations: A surface reading of the first stanza is that of an orange being peeled -- perhaps a “navel” orange, which is seedless, but has a small pit at “the navel crux” where the fruit encloses a tiny secondary fruit.

For us of course, the navel marks the point of attachment of the umbilical cord, which  joined us to our mother. In the second stanza we are in an operating room, where the female patient is awake but “cannot view the surgeon hack/ who mutilates her focal point.”  Has he “cut off the nub” and removed the beginning of a new life?  Is this the “only core,” the only “ring to pluck?”

There are also interesting numerical aspects to the poem, hinted at by the mention of Fibonacci numbers (see Wikipedia) in the first stanza. Each line, except for the final line of a stanza, has eight syllables and each stanza has eight lines. This inner rhythm and the rhyming couplets at the end of stanzas help convey the poem’s great force.

     – Harvey Shepard

                                                                                                        (hshepard@gmail.com)

 “The Core of the Navel Crux” copyright 2006 by Maggie Kemp. Maggie lives with her husband, two teenage children, and dog on a pond in Lempster, New
Hampshire.  Studying loon families and other wildlife, kayaking, spending time with her family, and writing fill her life.