Cecilia Durbin is a proud Kentuckian, writer, and musician. Her work has appeared in Appalachian Review, Screen Door Review, and Shale. She currently serves as managing editor and book designer for Miracle Monocle at the University of Louisville where she also teaches English. Find her at ceciliadurbin.com
Nothing Sad Happens to the Animal - a note from Cecilia
“Nothing Sad Happens to the Animal” is a fragmented poem masquerading as a cohesive story, sort of the way life feels until you zoom out and get a bird’s-eye view. I was at a get-together and a friend started telling a story from her childhood about a dog, and the tone she was using made me worry that it was going to be an upsetting story, so I kept telling her to stop. Finally, she said, “Nothing sad happens to the animal. Now let me finish the story.” We’d had a few Two Hearted Ales so I’m not sure if the second part of that sentence is verbatim, but the first definitely is. As soon as she said it, I made a note of it and told her I was going to write a poem with that, and I did.
The poem itself uses elements of a quote from Sally Fields about learning to cope with trauma and alludes to “Coat of Many Colors,” a very excellent and heart-breaking song by the one and only, Dolly Parton. The process of writing the poem was one of those strange instances where everything just sort of wrote itself out and it all worked on the first go and that was that. I think my friend’s accidental quote was the final puzzle piece I needed to finish something I’d been carrying around for a long time.
“Nothing Sad Happens to the Animal” is about fear and survival—recurring themes for many of us both on and off the page—but it is also about transition and delusion, how we must move on and yet how difficult that process is–regardless if what we’re leaving behind is a burden or a gift. Sometimes it’s both.
Nothing Sad Happens to the Animal
After Sally, Dolly, and Emma
In the winter of your childhood, you
hid under the table in the basement
while men knocked at the front door
because dad told you to. Lights off,
sewing for yourself a blanket out of rags
from the coat of many colors
that mama made for you. It didn’t always
keep you warm but it was better
than nothing. And so you learned to walk
that way in a foot of snow, fifteen miles
back and forth, keeping warm by yourself.
In the summer of adulthood, now
don’t you forget—sweating rage and bullets,
nothing sad will happen, you believe,
if you hold tight enough
to the fear-soaked fabric,
more cumbersome
each morning. The panicked aubade—
Why am I so fucking hot all the time?
It’s the quilt that kept you safe, once,
the one that weighs you down.
Poet of the Quarter – Emily Laubham (May 2023)
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Rough Diamond Poetry 