Poems Wrestling Format
--those are the beings which follow this paragraph, which I'm now wishing I would have written as a poem... I don't post poetry on my website often, partly because once a piece is "web-published," most literary publications will no longer accept it (and I value, immensely, perhaps too immensely, the readership (and prestige (and acceptance)) that comes from acceptance by a literary journal). Partly, though, the reason I don't post poems here is that I struggle to lay them out in the way I want them to appear. I can't indent lines or precisely control spacing. So much of my life this year, however---of all our lives this year---has eluded precise control, has lived in adjustment and new imaginings and negotiation. So much has called into question our desire for affirmation from institutions and industries and their definitions of perfection. So, following, are beings which wrestle with format, not only indents and spacing, but also the format for how I'm supposed to share and you're supposed to read, and they aren't especially groundbreaking or impressive, but they're a piece of my world that I wanted to share with you, with you, especially:
SWAMP SONGS
(& Screen Door Snippets)
VIRGINIA STORM
a magnolia hurricane---
bruised petals curved
like hips in the rain
A plant crashed and no one
listed the casualties:---
ladybug___ant___thin
hairs___the dent-petal of one
lady slipper... The garden
homes such casual death
The swamp reeks___with
__primrose and jasmine---
knots of wanted unwontedness,
a woven language of accounts:
Knot, Knot,______briar
Knot knot, Knot, the purple furl
______at the center scent of fern
Knot, not Knot, Knot, bare ankles
____, braided with chiggers and
mud. Hair knotted in vines, caught
as Absalom instead of oak and
vengeance, in the written language
of swamp___and___of__delight.
Turtles swirl off from the
deck beneath me, breaking
the surface to mate;
stacks, three deep, swarm.
I look away from their
marshy decadance, an or-
gy in the light.
JUNE & Ripples divine the pond's face
__MAY___&___Light dwells the swamp
3 O'CLOCK &
pink flowers---like
the pond portal's
door handle---float,
entrancing me,
& the heron ahead
---on my path---keeps
wading, patiently
REPETITION
(A bird flock frays the dusk)
I'm tided;--
a bowl tiding
with anxious
__with brim
____with graft-irises___in their yellow wilt
____in their almost____in their death-faint
swell
desolation a fine mist
or sauna steam which coats
______the lungs
or particles from
______the mines
_____________chicken dust
a thousand needles piercing
______you
like alpineglow's chilly
______companion
desolation like invasive lupine
smothering Icelandic hills
like "hello" at the wake
and trout listless in
______your listless gaze
desolation a metaphor
_____because you want
to write it unreal---to unreel---
_____to unhook the fish
of despair, to no longer
breathe it in, the desolation,
______that mist.
I enter the space
the wind avoids
I come into being
_______in gaps
I am lee____not
a boulder
___to insist upon
_______themself.
Do you ever get a word stuck
in your mind. like a chorus,
like a chant:
___________Glory
___________radial
___________worthless
___________tender
___________pain
___________divine
like a groove on the branch
that you grasp every dusk
on the cliff. like a chant, like
a chant:
_______Radial
_______worthless
_______radial
_______tender
_______worthless
_______glory and
_______pain, divine
_______(but only one at a time)
hummed over the coda beyond
the cliff. hummed like a prayer.
hummed
_______like words mean something,
like a sliver left humming
_______in your palm
___________________as you pray.
