We Are All Terminal But This Exit Is Mine by James Duncan Unknown Press, 2017 You are sitting with friends around a fire, or maybe you are standing together on the bank of a river when someone utters those words: “Remember when…” James H Duncan’s latest book of prose poetry, >We Are All Terminal But This Exit Is Mine (Unknown Press, 2017), evokes a nostalgic flavor of reverence for the past as the now-adult narrator faces cancer and an uncertain future. Duncan begins one poem, “Elliot Road, 1988,” with a conversational tone that is echoed across his collection: “Do you remember the yard at Elliot Road?” In a poem called, “The Scary Parts,” he writes, “you’d […] sob alone in a studio in Queens and you’d wonder how much a train ticket would cost to go north, not say a word, kiss your mother hello, curl up with a book, call your sister, and ask if she can remember when […] see if her path through the pines aligns with yours. It won’t. It never does. But it helps you some…” Though far from the most powerful piece in the 94-page book, this moment captures the narrator’s enduring desire to return to a place of comfort and safety, and the knowledge that, while the path ahead is challenging, it is only his to uncover. The theme of childhood is explicit in Duncan’s poetry, but paired with this is the unnerving theme of death. Innocence and rebellion share bunk beds in this book; rarely is the reader shown an image of childlike joy without also getting a reminder of mortality or conflict. We are introduced to a contest of bullfrog catching in “Man and His Tools,” in which Duncan writes, “The two or three times a year when you’d actually catch one you were a true champion.” This tradition takes a turn when the neighborhood kids begin killing the frogs “for sport and laughs.” Duncan describes, “You could see something new in the faces of the kids… A dead joy frothing in the whites of their eyes.” When the bullfrogs have vanished, he returns to the pond in hopes that one will appear, will “hold out against the human tide.” The narrator sees himself in the frogs, helpless to their attackers as he is to his illness: “who holds the rock that will take my lungs, destroy my heart, end my life?” There is a focus on poverty in this body of work, alluding to how lack of economic means can cast shadows on an otherwise carefree upbringing. The narrator often refers to himself and his peers as “trailer trash,” an affront that has become an identity. In “Exit 11,” the narrator acknowledges a superiority then felt over those from more impoverished backgrounds. “What a dump,” he describes of another trailer park. “At least we had a basketball hoop and paved streets.” In “Tundra,” the narrator speaks of “the power going out three or four times every single winter.” The book’s final poem, “One More Kiss ’Fore I Go,” begins, “Every other road but the way out led to a hillbilly cul-de-sac and a shameful, incurable existence.” The theme of shame and pity is woven into these poetic works; a poignant example of such arrives in “Crows and Night Birds.” Duncan writes, “Crows and night birds crying to each other in languages we will never know, hated by we for we cannot fly, we who will not know the joys of melting into the night sky, we who do not know much joy at all, and night birds know so much.” This abstracted piece veers more into the figurative language of poetry than the straightforward syntax of most other prose poems in Duncan’s collection. The birds are a metaphor for freedom, and the narrator’s envy of them is emblematic of his feelings of being “lost, lost, lost to the prayers of their gods and ours.” Duncan allows the reader glimpses into fears of childhood, both the imagined and the heartbreakingly real. In “Whistled While He Walked, Too,” the reader is introduced to Billy Boot, a nickname given to “some loner who lived up the hill.” Care is taken to build images around Billy’s typical route, “probably a ninety minute walk each way” and about how his boots “gleam in the sunshine.” There is a sense of foreboding with “That day finally came…” and morose finality in the tragic image that closes this poem about a child’s suicide: “his black leathers all polished and gleaming with a pile of little school shoes in the corner, cleaned up, almost like new, but not quite.” Duncan presents his prose with urgency, creating tension with the content; attention is paid to minute details of juvenile landscapes yet there is also a grave overtone of adulthood. There is a nod to an unknown “end” being heaven or hell, along with an apparent disregard for either. In one of the strongest poems, “That Gum You Like…,” Duncan gives much information in just four sentences that comprise this piece. There are two kids chewing “zebra stripe gum from the pharmacy in town where mom buys the medicine that helps her headaches.” Following this awareness of pain, readers are given beautiful imagery: “Sparrows pinwheel in the Sunday morning light.” The admiration of nature leads to an apathetic attitude toward religion in the final two lines, paralleling the nonchalant chewing in line one: “I don’t ever want to go to church again. I found it somewhere else.” This “it” seems to be joy or at least contentment, and has been “found” both in the pleasure of a favorite gum and in the chance to observe a miracle of nature. Natural images play a key role in Duncan’s rendition of hope; storms serve as a metaphor for retaining power of self despite lacking control of environment or circumstance. In “Night Weather” the narrator feels vulnerable in “the anticipation, the almost,” but storms are painted more positively in “No Warning,” where the narrator chooses to stay and watch rather than hide from the storm. With “rose gold skies turning catatonic black,” he stands his ground, inviting “that wind [to] crawl over me, faster and colder […] the rain coming, hail coming, hell coming…” This piece is visceral and alive, forcing the reader to weather the panic while winking at proof of survival. The tone gives a finger to the approaching tornado, with a do-your-worst narration that ends on an ominous note, foreshadowing (as it is put in the book’s title poem) “cancerous foliage blooming in my flesh.” Another standout piece is “Absolution,” one of the few poems that delve into the narrator’s (though indirect) experience with cancer treatment, as most of the book attempts escapism from this reality. “Absolution” introduces a child with cancer, referring to her as “the little bald girl.” She is drawing a rainbow above friends wearing smiles because she wants them to be happy. In this act of selfless love, the girl inspires a tangent in the narrator; he begins to reflect on perspective: “Somewhere else in the universe someone is rushing his wife off to the hospital, someone is writing a letter and staring at it and throwing it away […] somewhere else lungs are crippled by cigarette smoke in lonely bedrooms at night, no radio, no hope, fuck it all.” It is interesting that hope is equated to music here, as Duncan scatters musical references throughout his book, and mentions MTV (when they used to feature musicians instead of binge-drinkers) as being significant to the narrator. The poem resounds due to its closing line: “Somewhere there’s a rainbow overhead too, drawn by a little girl in the grips of the insurmountable, smiling at all of us, absolving everything, all of it, whether we deserve it or not.” In We Are All Terminal But This Exit Is Mine, accessible language guides a homecoming to a time of frivolity, including an air of melancholy for innocence lost too soon. Duncan honors his inner child, yet maintains a serious tone. He avoids overly-saccharine reminiscence by using concrete imagery to build a landscape that is familiar and welcoming. In reading this work, you will feel you are trick-or-treating with friends or visiting the pond where you spent youthful summer days. You will find a moment of peace in the storm. Visit James Duncan's Website Visit Unknown Press' Website

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