Kurt Nimmo

MINNESOTA JUMP

another
trip to the doctor.
I drive over the Colorado River
and look from the bridge
to the water below.
it looks more like
the Tallahatchie than the Colorado
turgid and green.
looking closer
I see something washed up
on the far bank.
for a second
I believe it is a dead body
but as I cross over I realize it is
a large white
plastic garbage bag.
this reminds me
of John Berryman
who was celebrated by
The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry
after his jump in Minnesota.
Berryman miscalculated
and hit the west bank of the Mississippi River.
not that it particularly mattered.
it was January in Minneapolis
and undoubtedly
the river

was frozen solid.


Gerald So reads "Minnesota jump":



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Kurt confesses: "This poem was inspired by an article I read on the career of John Berryman. It appears writers and artists have a propensity for self destruction and suicide. This has always piqued my morbid curiosity."


KURT NIMMO was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1952. In the late '70s, he co-edited the successful literary magazine The Smudge. In the '80s, he edited Planet Detroit. Kurt has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes for fiction, and two of his books were selected as "modern classics" by the Wormwood Review. In 2015, he began writing poetry after a twenty-year hiatus. He lives in Smithville, Texas with his wife and two cats.