sorrows by the lisp, waspily, chooses stress
as a means to get through this stenciling
of unpredictability. Every theory cringes,
trembles behind the viewing glass.
Pardoning my cough executes the edict
of let’s ensue. A favorable weathering makes
her a churchly and flourishing nation state, bustle
then bust. She harvests the headstones of dead
languages. She flapjacks onto an onionish stack,
can’t tell papery film from inner layers, epigraphs
from their epicenters. Borrows the auditorium’s
echo, won’t give it back. More chandelier than
me, whistling a nervous gleam. I scrawl her words,
siphon their hiving syntax. Outside, the thrushes
no longer chirrup, bandaged to branches or tangled
in stonewalling, struck by their collective
coverage of grubs. She smacks the back of my head
with twiggy logic. It scratches thick, a foreign tongue
borrowed and fumbling. Thus a feather ruffled is
an announcement, a sound, an erstwhile accent.
man i wish i had the old draft in front of me. my comments will be a bit vague i think... also, it's really interesting to read your stuff with an actual collected sense of the topic, but i wonder how necessary it is to attach myself, if the poem exists without it. curious stuff stephen...clever girl.
ReplyDeleteyou're not a girl. anyway, i have to remember to include the title as beginning the first sentence of the poem and that trips me up, especially when i remember when the pronoun isn't introduced until the 2nd stanza. my problem though, that is a fun title (both for poem and subject). taking the quotes out of "ok, let's ensue" is an odd choice because i can't tell much of an effective difference. it was kind of cool to give her a bit of voice, since that's what the poem is about. "outside" still makes the scene change, but that might be what you want now. and i can't remember what hit the back of the head before, but i don't know how much i like "twiggy logic" there. i definitely like it though and think it should be somewhere. the nature overtones here are taking more shape and add a very interesting flavor that does mirror cecily and work really well. "chandelierer" still bugs me, but I know better (maybe now on that naturalistic level, but you don't want to overdo it of course). sometimes i make a puzzle of your poems stephen and try to make all the sonic connections between all the different words... it's like connect four. sweet poem dawg.
i'm blind. "more chandelier" works like a charm.
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