Month: October 2011

This poem was longlisted for the Fish Poetry Prize last spring, but alas, it missed the shortlist. I wrote it in July ’10, when I was in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica. It’s a terza rima box: thirteen lines, thirteen syllables per line. Click on the visual to view it in its full-sized glory in your browser. If my cursive’s a bother, the text is at the bottom. ♥

The Margay

I was bound by my gratitude and obligation,
as you were to your familial companions, yet
we ditched them all in spirit. A slice of elation

brought out a curve in your smile when you stealthily met
my eyes, for there was a crystallized understanding
between us. Recognition followed suit, and we let

it release our hidden history, reinforcing
that taut thread stretching from you to me, from me to you,
until we had to bend to its pull. We were circling,

each aware of the other, and you sent me your cue
to hang towards the back for the brief conversation
we both knew would be far too casual for the two
of us to talk about the renewed admiration.

During the summer of 2010, I wrote three poems that I subsequently submitted to a number of contests and literary journals to no avail. However, as developing a traditional publication record isn’t a priority at the moment, I’ve decided to post them. The first one’s below, and the others already have been scheduled to post over the next two weeks. Truth be told, I’m not as happy with them as I have been with my more recent work, but I feel like sharing. Anyway…

I’d never written a Petrarchan sonnet before I put these words to paper in June ’10. Honestly, I still didn’t manage it, as there’s no real volta, although I justified it to myself that grief itself cancelled out the volta. Hmm.

Here’s the text and an image. ♥

When You Were Mine.

It’s in a scrapbook, in a box they don’t mean to
open again. Your artifacts hurt too much for
regular consumption. There are tracts of grief, doors
locked from the inside, and everyone just makes do.
And yet, the curiosity builds as a lust
without the promise of relief. When you used to
spell out words on fogged up windows, it was I, too,
who reached through the translucence to find you. I trust
that in a hallowed place, they have evidence
of your vision. I won’t know. It’s not here. Like you.
It makes no difference if I trip myself up on
hypotheticals. Within the useless frequence
of this dire, crushed up need to take your hand, the view
remains the same wherever I go. You’re still gone.

Last time I posted a poem, I made an audio recording of it. This time, however, I felt compelled to write it out by hand—my nicest print, for my nicest cursive’s too large—and scan it in. It’s a twenty-line poem with twelve syllables per line and two broken lines where it felt like there ought to be stanza breaks. I’ve posted the full text after the image, just in case you’re having trouble with my handwriting/loading the .jpg. 

And what’s an asyndeton, you ask? You can read up on it here. ♥

Asyndeton v2.1

The words line up on the page in clean, carefully
plotted hedgerows, assembly lines of ideas,
suppositions, emotions. Their sentences pose
no mystery, the alchemical combination
of letters, characters align to suggest an
inside joke that’s lost on all who’ve lived beyond the
transformative diseases of the twentieth
century.
             The sunlight from my window peels back
a layer—a column of illumination,
light, redemption—to expose the contours of the
paper. The printing press kissed the page, it left low
furrows, caverns of delusion, obfuscation,
projection, near the spot where my practiced hand made
a note for you—only you.
                                      Shadows—the consorts
of the afternoon sun’s narrow exegesis,
the walls’, the curtains’ imprinting upon the page—
leave much to speculation, prognostication,
imagination, never deigning to provide
a breath of justification, explanation,
elucidation. Some things aren’t meant to be known.