How do we navigate trauma? This question serves as the basis of Connie Post’s poetry collection, Prime Meridian, published this year by Glass Lyre Press. Post travels through several dark scenes and guides us through them with sensitivity. Together, we float simultaneously above the darkness and deep within it, “. . . as if the earth were a womb / and you the child / passing through” (Prime Meridian). The perspective does not always stay second-person. The “I” does emerge. These shifts mirror the title of the collection as we dive through the center point, at zero, at the prime meridian, the root of traumas. 

Evoking antimeridian qualities, the subjects and speaker radiate outward, mimicking the formation of the sphere that is this collection. This sphere addresses harsh topics such as child rape both closely and at a distace; it bears witness to, “. . . the police / reading Miranda rights to someone else / while I watch you drive away” (Sunday in September). These moments are profound and heart-wrenching. Post navigates beauty and the disguise of silence, paralleling blooms of flowers to blooming bruises: “. . . and said nothing of the raging blooms / the apologies / buried in the ordered way / the flowers were arranged” (Gardening), or exploring war-related trauma: “. . . I asked / ‘did you ever kill anyone in the war’ / you went silent, looked away. . .” (Forgotten War). However, within the silences that thread through this collection, a sense of togetherness within these harsh explorations remains.

The themes of geography are the roads that lead us toward these dark destinations. Like the framing of hemispheres on a map, Post evokes folds and creases: “. . . you don’t tell anyone / why you sleep in your clothes / why you fold yourself in two places / before bed . . .” (Back Stage).

Prime Meridian is a globe being mapped, documenting relationships and experiences as if they were tectonic plates: “. . . you haven’t spoken to your family / in fifteen years / you wonder how much longer / a fault line / can maintain its own silence” (Fault Lines). 

And yes, the tone throughout holds a cumbersome darkness, where we ride along “. . . on the stony edge of night / until the earth stops breathing . . .” (Silences). The tone of the collection is as weighty as gravity: “. . . until the next time / my bones decide / to speak the language / of falling stones” (Crumbling). Post creates a parallel between the earth’s trauma-laden body and the speaker’s own body. But there are anti-gravity moments too, weightless, fantastical moments where Post recognizes the beauty in oceanic crusts, explores mercy and the reckoning bodies can bring to this earth. Dig into the dark, cool soil of Prime Meridian to unearth the hard truths, and float in the atmosphere above and over trauma to find peace.

July 2020