Aimee Gagnon: Introduction to the Poems of Ayaan Agane

In her poetry Ayaan has mastered the challenge of doing more than just telling a story. She creates vivid images and lines that will reverberate through your brain for weeks. One of the best examples of this is her poem “Everybody Smokes.” Ayaan tells the story of how she was drawn into smoking; however, she also gives an intimate glimpse into the culture of smoking. The poem tells how she was seduced by “the scent” of cigarettes, blending it into the story of her parents. Ayaan describes the images “of a smoker and non’s lungs/ juxtaposed” within which she sees her “parents’ marriage.” She shows the way relationships are formed through objects or habits.

In “Love Poem,” the narrating voice explores her feelings by reflecting off another couple’s love. Even though the other is a TV couple, Ayaan makes their love vivid:

She follows him without reservation,
Stirring thunder in the water.
They sit, two fish, with Sunday ease, natural

The love between this couple is described in such a way that it is comforting and intimate; however, it ends in tragedy—showing us, in a fresh way, the sweet bitterness of love. We are left in the last two lines with: “tea kettle voices that start as whistles/ and then turn into screams,” deftly moving from intimacy to the tragic, leaving us desiring more of her poetry.


Love Poem

Upon finding her
husband in their bath tub, fully clothed,
Sandra is unconcerned. She
follows him without reservation,
stirring thunder in the water.
They sit, two fish, with Sunday ease, natural
And years of this seem to flow between them.

I watch this from my living room, eating, thirsty
Waiting for my tea to boil.
She's so much older, Sandra, over fifty now
But the camera is kind to her
sympathetic because her husband is dying,
knowing that any age is too young to be widowed.
And as it slides across her face to
reveal it smirking, unashamed
Years of it seem to flow between them

I have sat up some nights
listening to television noise
coming from other rooms
thinking that maybe the tub is so big, is big enough
that it can hold these kinds of histories, like when
you sometimes rub your beard against my face.
And in those nights when I sit alone
I hear younger women laughing,
tea kettle voices that start as whistles
and then turn into screams

--Ayaan Agane


Everybody Smokes

I first took up the habit
for the scent.
My love
smoked black kreteks
to make me inch closer
to his musk.
He burned me once
in error
believing his car lighter to be cold
he pressed it into me,
he was always pressing into me,
and my words, my pleading
only seemed amidst his gleeful laughter
a part of the ruse.

My father, not surprisingly
smoked an unfamiliar brand
so naturally I assumed his colon cancer
was of the lung,
and at ten, when
they showed me the pictures
of a smoker and non’s lungs
juxtaposed
I thought I saw my parents’ marriage.

I have walked campus all day
past people too breathless to say hello
admitting to myself that
others take me in so easily, rhythmically.
We smell our own.
Even my professor asks to
bum one while I wait between classes
and I assent, apologizing for
my young, pretentious brand,
for the clove some Indonesian
has put in my cigarette,
only to find that he has his own exotic type
that was young when he was young.

And now when I linger
outside the back of the school building, smoking
hoping to run into my professor,
hoping to run into compliments,
it’s my excuse.
The back entrance dark, my intentions darker
and me there, proffering things

--Ayaan Agane