necks like slow songs & beer-slippery hands
outstretched in ugly bars
grip each other & batter
beneath trees:
thump.
Fallen wasp nests, all sweet pulp
& chitin, get caught up in sudden breezes
& roll to the tree-line
where moss furiously melts snow.
Further in, pellets scatter
amidst bleached grasses in the rounded
spaces between trees, a recollection of warmth
where deer knelt.
At the edge of the clearing, a stump
& charred trunk-stillness
where the plane touched
down:
thump.
Nearby, boys in shirtsleeves turn
backs on spring’s riffling fingers
& grit whirlwinds
flash knobby spines under fabric pulled tight
fabric snatched away.
Under the trees, ragged mushrooms
& splayed ribs emerge from ice as trains clatter by
& fat horses delicately cross tracks, hooves
striking steel:
thump.
4 comments:
there are so many nice images here, maybe tighter?
and while I like the first three stanzas individually, each having something quite nice in them, I keep thinking of Anne S's diagnostics on my work... and recognize the first 3 as a warm up and that the piece actually starts at stanza 4. or, and this is quite surgical, start the poem with # 6, then #5 and finish with #4.
no matter what you decide to do with this, you have certainly taken me somewhere with it...
thanks
I'm not sure I get what is making the thump in the first stanza. The geese? Is thump the right sound? (Slow songs loses me there, too.)'
I like the fourth stanza a lot, particularly the "charred trunk-stillness". I like the fifth too, but "shirtsleeves" stands out to me as sounding old-fashioned.
In 6, what are the "splayed ribs" actual ribs? Whose? Like the last image here, though I'm not sure exactly how fat, delicate and thump all belong together.
There are really nice images here, but I was also left feeling a bit out-of-sorts with it, i.e. I'm left spending some time wondering if a goose can thump, and, the connection between stanza 5 & 6 are foggy for me. Where (and when) are we that there is a plane, train, horses and boys..?
ariel
your work has become a lot denser, more sound-oriented of late. i'm enjoying the shifts in your writing ove rthe years as you continue to play and try out new ideas. and here is a good example of play. as the others have said, there's a lot of lovely images here. the question is how does the reader tie them together. through the sound thump. through the locaters "further in" "at the edge" "nearby" that imply one place. hmmm... i wonder about a different title that might help place us, maybe even a long rambling one.
also i wonder about the sound thump. is it the right sound? or can the sound be implied? or different each time?
the writing here is great ( i like the goose necks liek slow songs and beer slippery hands especially). i'm just not sure how to read it, where to focus, ie what's most important in the poem. can you add a layer to this or sharpen the focus somehow? or make more connections between the scenes? not sure if these thoughts are helpful. hmm...
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