R.G. Evans’s “Lucky” is a disquieting poem, to be sure, perhaps one best served up after a second cup of Saturday morning coffee.
The obvious reason for that is found in the fragmentary stories embedded in each line, hints of illness, addiction, abuse, never elaborated and never resolved. Luck, Evans shows us, is scalable, and if the baseline is low enough what counts as good fortune may barely rise above it.
Sometimes, it’s simply “one breath in and one breath out,” as he writes in the poem.
Never mind an unexpected windfall or a dream come true, or any of the grand ways we tend to define luck. Such good fortune never comes to bear in “Lucky,” although the reader may find that it looms large between the lines as a counterpoint to what actually is said.
Evans is an award-winning poet, a singer-songwriter, and a longtime teacher— “a teacher who writes,” he said, rather than a writer who teaches—who retired from a 30-year career in high school classrooms in 2020 and continues to teach writing at the college level. He is the author of three poetry collections (see his bio below); his first, Overtipping the Ferryman, captured the attention of a judge for the Aldrich Press Poetry Prize who remarked, Evans said, that “she had read many manuscripts, but then she came across a cynic.” She awarded his book the 2013 Aldrich Poetry Prize, as luck would have it.
Others, too, have noted that his poems can be disconcerting at times, but he doesn’t apologize for wrapping them around the entirety of human experience.
“I was told my work tends toward the dark side,” he acknowledged, “but you can’t embrace humanity without that.”
In fact, I would argue that it is realism, not cynicism, that is on full display in a poem such as “Lucky,” which is significantly an assemblage of actual comments by people who confided in Evans a few years ago.
It was around the time he retired from teaching high school that “so many people around me started telling me their problems,” he said. The speakers are real, the problems are real, and so are the unusual but essential strokes of luck that give the poem its striking perspective.
“The dialogue is actually what they said.”
So, just what is luck for some of the people who might often go unheard?
Here’s R.G. Evans’s poem “Lucky.”
LUCKY
Luck is one breath in and one breath out.
It’s the blood pressure running high or low
but still running.
Luck is the way the food stays down
for the first time in over a week.
Ask around. You’ll find what feels lucky to others:
--It’s when my father finally left my addict mom
even though we sleep now on our cousin’s floor
--It’s a day when the pain in my uterus
isn’t bad enough to make me scream
--It’s the voice of God that found me
after my husband found an HIV-infected whore
--It’s the deadline that keeps my mind off
the lump still growing in my breast
--It’s finding out the police are here
for my father, not for me
Lucky the little dog barks every time the front step creaks.
Lucky the razor stays locked up in its case.
Lucky the hand is no longer a fist.
If you want to feel lucky, take a look at a stone.
If your name isn’t carved there, it’s your lucky day.
—R.G. Evans
R.G. Evans is the author of Overtipping the Ferryman, The Holy Both, and Imagine Sisyphus Happy. His poems, stories, and nonfiction have appeared in Rattle, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Weird Tales, among other publications. His albums of original songs, Sweet Old Life and Kid Yesterday Calling Tomorrow Man, are avaliable on most streaming services. https://kelsaybooks.com/search?q=R.G.+Evans https://www.amazon.com/Overtipping-Ferryman-R-G-Evans/dp/0615938019/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Overtipping+the+Ferryman&qid=1703865111&sr=8-1
https://mainstreetragbookstore.com/?s=The+Holy+Both
Lucky to have R.G. Evans remind me how lucky I am. Deeply affective and so well done. I can type this comment, but it may be a while before I can speak.
I am now awake.