‘Public Works’ by Meghan Maguire Dahn

In a small act of coincidence, perhaps, I came across this poem not too long after having a good conversation with a new friend, a fellow poet, about the literary world, politics, and personal responsibility. We talked about how we can work to better our little corner of the world. And so I was/am shook by the poem ‘Public Works’ by Meghan Maguire Dahn in the new journal Small Orange. This stanza, in particular, won’t quit me:

On the third day we must ask
what matters more—
Beauty or the Public Good.

This short poem, centered on snails mating in Florida (“the iridescent twist and release”), reads to me as a necessary moment of sober reflection on how we intersect with, overwhelm, and replace the natural world; how a binary like “Beauty or the Public Good” is both false and heartbreakingly resonant. I’m not sure what note the poem ends with; the speaker offers themselves as the healer of broken necks—such a violent, specific injury—and I find myself unsure, uncertain, caught between extremes, thinking about power (“and each of your subordinates”) and the generosity on display here.

Small Orange