You are a fistful of half-sucked
jawbreakers, every one tried
by teeth
& expelled, the tongue lolling
sour at bad news.
You are a card of homely buttons
that never made it out of the sewing kit, balled up
& swallowed whole. You are the torn
shirt, the gaping threads after
the passion has cooled & someone
has to do the goddamn mending.
(You are the row of buttons on the floor.
You are rendered fat. Bits
of bone.)
You are a row of cloudy specimen jars
each with its bloody lump of cells
excized & floating. The body aches without question.
The body limps & bleeds. And we could have strung
a necklace with those gory
blasted beads
instead.
* * *
I'm sorry I've been absent so far from May Day. But I'm doing the School of Writing at CMU and I had several sun-lit stretches today in which to write. And so I began writing...
12 comments:
I really LOve your first line, Ariel.."You are a fistful of hal-sucked jawbreakers, every one tried by teeth & expelled,"
(I'll be presumptuous & say that this is the borrowed necklace for your book launch last Hump day..?)
Yes, the very one.
Heh. My aunt has a hematite pendant that has my toothmark on it.
I liked the jawbreaker image, too, and actually all the rest of it. I found it surprising, the way the images became more visceral as the poem progressed. It feels like there's an undercurrent of anger or some other strong feeling here (or am I reading too much into it?).
I felt the same way Joanne,and only left it without comment for what I couldn't quite voice or understand. Regardless, I enjoyed 'all' of the poem...
But aren't angry poems, conflicted poems, don't-know-what-I-think poems okay too?
Or is the issue that the reason for the anger isn't crystal clear?
I didn't get angry. I got that the grandmother must have died -- that the necklace was a reminder of many things -- childhood, passion -- but also death.
The latter, Ariel. Anger & conflict are perfectly acceptable! And good and right..:-)
So, just to be clear (because the poem isn't...), would describing the relationship a bit more help?
I agree with the other comments that while I love this, the voice, the imagery (so tactile!), it has an emotional undercurrent that is strong but which I don't quite know how to identify/contextualize with what I've got.
Aha! Your question in itself is very telling. Yes,I think it would help if you found a way of saying that the current lies in the history between two people.
I love this poem. That's enough said.
But because it might be helpful, here's some secondary reactions.
The use of "you" contributes a lot to the emotion. Well done.
I struggle with the visual. It's introduced as a necklace, yet seems at the end to be loose beads... I'm not sure how to picture it. Plus it is spoken of as "you" a singular thing, yet all the descriptions are of pieces. Perhaps you could title it "On inheriting the pieces of my..."
I wonder if you couldn't be more clear about the relationship to the grandmother versus the relationship to the necklace, and the desire to keep/have the things that bring us the most memories, or at lease the desire to keep a part of the past through the object. I think the muddling of the grandmother/necklace "you" is fine, but incomplete towards the end--and you could develop this memory/object/relationship fuller.
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