Episode 086 Armor - Sharon Olds

Connor and Jack discuss the Sharon Olds poem "Armor" about an experience she had with her son. Connor mentions the discussion Jo and Amy have about art and power in "Little Women" and Olds' penchant for four beat lines and heavy enjambment. Jack brings up flatworms and both marvel at the way Olds goes so many places from an everyday experience.

Armor
By: Sharon Olds

Just about at the triple-barreled pistol
I can’t go on. I sink down
as if shot, beside the ball of its butt
loaded with mother-of-pearl. My son
leaves me on the bench, and goes on. Hand on
hip, he gazes at a suit of armor,
blue eyes running over the silver,
looking for a slit. He shakes his head,
hair greenish as the gold velvet
cod-shirt hanging before him in volutes
at the metal groin. Next, I see him
facing a case of shields, fingering
the sweater over his heart, and then
for a long time I don’t see him, as a mother will
lose her son in war. I sit
and think about men. Finally Gabriel
comes back, sated, so fattened with gore
his eyelids bulge. We exit under the
huge tumescent jousting irons,
their pennants a faded rose, like the mist
before his eyes. He slips his hand
lightly in mine, and says *Not one of those*
*suits is really safe*. But when we
get to the wide museum steps
railed with gold like the descent from heaven,
he can’t resist,
and before my eyes, down the stairs,
over and over, clutching his delicate
unprotected chest, Gabriel
dies, and dies.