I can make “stasis” rhyme with “september”, watch
I am a lump of fat with a mouth near the top.
I live with the cats in a den of sleep. One brown
Mouth and a skull full of blood to share.
We stay warm until we are not. The orchids are
dropping their blooms, purple napkins
from green laps and I watch each damp refuse
wistful, knowing I could have
done better, and now it is too late. I have drawn
a tubful of tepid, bright
In a separate room where I will shift in the
White until I am scrubbed, and can believe I am really a captive
Mermaid. The cats and I can never get warm though
They are self-cleaning, like the oven. Outside,
The dog noses tender tawns, tufts of new
Grass in the sun (all yellow as I left them) while
The clock coasts over its place-makers.
Thirteen more hours to resist the bed’s undertow,
So listen to the kitchen trash rattle, the
Beautiful-day whistle of the Sunbeam on the stove.
I am speaking, a brown mouth
into an avocado receiver: a sound,
Refined, a sound, refined, a sound, refined, I
Am not 1973, I am not aqua and green, red is not
The color of my fulfillment, I do not
Know the sound of better angels, this fabric
Is post-war and in the corner
brown piles of signified accumulate,
plop.
nicoleeee said,
September 29, 2008 at 6:49 pm
wow i love this poem.
anatomyofadress said,
September 29, 2008 at 6:54 pm
really? Wow. Felt kind of non-sequitur and blah to me. That’s wonderful to hear. Thanks!
unreliable narrator said,
September 29, 2008 at 9:08 pm
PLEASE let me show this to my students. And/or let me Friday Refrain it. Puhleeeeezeeeee….
Cuz I was gonna say: Hey, the last sentence of your email would be a great first line to a poem! This just goes to show how superfluous anyone else but you is/are/was/were/will be to the actual process of actual writing. Avocado.
Fuckin ***A*** I dig this poem.
So forget about my petition–you’ll revise this in a month (because are we really going to let you get away with skull AND blood? I think one’s going to wind up going) and then someone slick will take it, and they will pay you, ha *ha*! September (marginally) more bearable when it earns its own rent.
unreliable narrator said,
September 29, 2008 at 9:13 pm
(And are you going to let you get away with the deliberate ambiguity of “though” in line 12? which might, unfortunately, appear to readers as if you just neglected the comma after “warm”? And more knottily, will you permit yourself to capitalize line beginnings at your own Olenaesque whim? Only several weeks’ reflection will tell.)
Anything but blah, Ms. Apophasis.
anatomyofadress said,
September 30, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Shut up! You really liked it? You can use it however you want, if you want. And Apophasis: YES EXACTLY! It didn’t occur to me before you said it…And yes I got rid of skull but I like the deliberate ambiguity of the absent comma in line 12. The capitalizations are a hazard of working in Microsoft Word but you know who else does that? MJ Bang.
d said,
October 1, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Wow, love all the monosyllabs in stanza 1!
Cats being self-cleaning, brown mouth into an avocado receiver…
d
anatomyofadress said,
October 2, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Monosyllables: just so! I have been making edits to make overly-mellifluous words more…grunty.