“Orderly” is the first poem in Charlotte Pence’s poetry collection Code, out from Black Lawrence Press. The collection released in 2022. I had the honor of hearing Pence read this summer at the Longleaf Writer’s Conference and get a signed copy at the local bookstore, Sundog Books. I find myself picking up the collection again…
OPENINGS by Rae Cline
“Orderly” is the first poem in Charlotte Pence’s poetry collection Code, out from Black Lawrence Press. The collection released in 2022. I had the honor of hearing Pence read this summer at the Longleaf Writer’s Conference and get a signed copy at the local bookstore, Sundog Books. I find myself picking up the collection again and again.
In “Orderly” the speaker observes a button collecting dust:
For weeks, his button. Weeks later,
his button. Left on the bureau.
Dust squirming into its four eyes.
Like every annoyance, in the end…,
The button begins with “annoyance,” a familiar grievance one has with a partner and the shared spaces where random items and messes can gather in the home. The speaker does not linger too long in the annoyance but rather takes the reader to another place entirely, to grief and loss of a loved one. The speaker does not allow for closure opting instead for a memorialization of this fresh loss and it is beautifully haunting.
Each time I read “Orderly,” I cannot help but consider the loss of my grandmother and the jewelry she left in my mother’s home. I could not bring myself to touch it. Similar to Pence’s speaker, I was not able to see Grandma Ruthie before she died. I was driving all night, alone, to get to her and still driving when I received the call that she had passed. I pulled over and rented a room at a roadside motel that night and like the speaker, wondered who tended Grandma Ruthie’s body, what stranger was touching her. And when I finally arrived at my mother’s house, all I had were the artifacts of Grandma Ruthie—her sweatsuits, the velvet ones she liked because they were soft and comfortable; the drawer full of jewelry in disarray, gold bangles and earrings and rings she bought late at night from the QVC while smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee.
In “Orderly” the speaker re-codes the button from annoyance to grief artifact and it was similar for me and Grandma Ruthie, though my re-coding was of a gold bracelet, a thin bangle she liked to wear, one of several she stacked on her wrist. My annoyance was regret. I wanted more time with her. And perhaps anger that I did not get this time and knowing that some stranger, some orderly, tended her body like they had done when I put her in the rehabilitation center after the ICU. I watched the orderlies, two large men with kind faces, disrobe her and lift her from the mattress and turn her so that the nurse could itemize her naked body, looking for bruising or cuts she might have brought with her and mark them on her chart, a black and white line drawing of a person, front side, back side. The nurse handed me the chart so I could sign and agree, yes, that bruise was there when my grandmother arrived. The itemizations of a loved one’s traumas are orderly. I had not wanted to be there. I did not want to smell the shit in the air because no one had taken proper care to clean my ailing grandmother. I did not want to watch two strange men disrobe and turn my grandmother in the air like meat but Grandma Ruthie asked me to stay. There was no one else. My mother could not handle the trauma of it. The ICU had been too much for her and she had left Ohio entirely and went back to North Carolina. Or maybe it was that she didn’t want to face my Aunt Sandy, who was, agreeably, too much sometimes. Aunt Sandy could be mean when she drank and she did not want Grandma Ruthie in that place, as she called it.
This poem makes me cry. Not only for the beautiful language and turn of lines but also for what it opens in my heart and memory and I feel a little less alone in my grief for Grandma Ruthie each time time I read it. Thank you, Charlotte Pence, for this gift of language. I am truly grateful.
Code is highly recommended.
About Charlotte Pence
Charlotte Pence is Mobile, Alabama’s inaugural poet laureate and a 2024 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Author of two full-length poetry books, two award-winning chapbooks, a composition handbook, and editor of The Poetics of American Song Lyrics, Charlotte recently moved to Austin to direct the MFA program at Texas State University.
About Black Lawrence Press
Black Lawrence Press is an independent publisher of contemporary poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. We also publish the occasional translation from German. Founded in 2004 by Colleen Ryor, Black Lawrence became an imprint of Dzanc Books in 2008. In January 2014, we spread our wings and became an independent company in the state of New York. Our books are distributed nationally through Independent Publishers Group to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and various brick and mortar retailers. We also make our titles available through our website and at various conferences and book fairs. Black Lawrence Press publishes three periodicals: Sapling is a weekly newsletter for writers, specifically those actively publishing and trying to get published by literary journals, small presses, and independent publishers. tr. is an international literary journal that celebrates and highlights the cultural power and vital contributions of literature in translation to the English-speaking world. Fair Copy is a journal of prose and process.
About Openings
Openings is a weekly recommendations column by Rae Cline, published at Eckleburg. Openings features literary musings, culture and book recommendations, focusing on beautiful books with memorable openings, where readers meet intriguing characters, settings and moments in which the mind can explore what is, what might be and how this opens the reader’s imagination. Read more on Instagram @raeclineauthor and at the new raecline.substack, where you can submit recent titles of adult literary fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry for consideration.
