I am so happy to have a poem from Maurice Carlos Ruffin to share. Maurice is probably well known to you as a rockstar fiction writer and teacher, and now you know that he is also a poet. I love this poem for the way it challenges our perceptions as it makes its lament, its pledge to “save nothing of this world of Y.” The poem also celebrates the lesser-celebrated duty of poetry, an overlooked vessel of power that can exist as a place to contain our “roar.” Thanks for this poem Maurice, and thanks to all of you for celebrating Louisiana poets with me in this space.  

—Alison Pelegrin 

Soft Man 

after Natalie Shapiro’s “Hard Child” 

I’ve always been a soft man, lowing with  

my brothers, who take the brightest  

born to serve in a menagerie of self-regard.  

I would save nothing of this world of Y.  

Not beauty pageants, not NFL football games, 

Not big guns or “boys will be boys.”  

I lament Atalanta who was transformed  

into a lion for offending Zeus, a hurtful man 

if ever one sat on a mountain. I lament not 

because she was forced to pull a chariot, 

oxlike, with the man who roofied her, 

But because she had no sister in the telling 

to groom her tail and hear her roar. 

Maurice Carlos Ruffin is the author of the historical novel The American Daughters as well as The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You, a One Book One New Orleans selection, a New York Times Editor’s Choice, and was longlisted for the Story Prize. His debut, We Cast a Shadow, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the PEN America Open Book Prize. Ruffin is a professor of Creative Writing at Louisiana State University.