First Assignment courtesy of B.
arguments on penetration
Top (I)
It’s not enough to want him open
you have to pry, wrench, lie, spit, slide
your tongue-sounds through his ear-holes, beg
like wolf to pig: I will fry you in your own grease.
It’s just enough to want him open, the rest is in
the finger-mouth-epithet triumvirate, spitting
dirt-coarse lies through powdered teeth, wolves
are familiar with the things conceived darkly in estrus but
pigs know their meat is sweet and salt to taste.
Bottom (II)
There are limits, but you do not know them,
do not heed the ache if there’s more to stretch.
There are limits and as you approach them you are full
of light, eyes brave with light and lust when light fails.
knocking hard, blowing, houses bending, the tender
meat tendered rough from the ham of the beast – satisfaction
lies in the taste of the things prepared darkly.
There is one language that flesh speaks:
in grunts and gasps, sighs and shudders.
Bottom(IV)
not be) they would be somewhere deep, planted
near the dark meat, near the hard knocking center
where the pig cries whee, voice thick with satisfaction.
to stretch, to ache, to search for lust in fading light
and be full
of anything that fills.
Top (V)
Is it enough to want him open? When even prying,
wrenching, lying and spitting gets only inches of you
sliding? His pig-sounds rising like a chorus as you fry
him, his grease pops, his meat softens and burns.
Then again, it’s just enough to spit him, opened
to fingers/mouths/epithets dirt-coarse and darkly
powdered, sticky with familiar tastes. The wolf knows
the salted pig is tender to his teeth and best eaten in estrus.
The penultimate quatrain, and the way it speaks to Top (I), takes my fuckin' head off.
ReplyDeletesecond above &
ReplyDeleteand be full
of anything that fills.
was buck
god I am so excited to read this. I will be commenting and writing and posting later on today, but both these poems look delicious.
ReplyDeletealright, full detailed comments time.
ReplyDeleteyou might hate me for this, but a title this matter-of-fact attached to a poem this thick and expressive and delightfully odd doesn’t work on any level for me. comprehensive, yes. ironic in tone, yeah, but deceptive about your product. you aren’t selling an argument. and plus, before all that, not particularly grabby.
your symmetry and linguistic repetitions in this poem are brilliant. the line “it’s not enough to want him open” is a napalm line already, the repetition only helps. as does the estrus (which, btw, holy fucking fuck, nice) and the grease. the form is great, and I think you were able to latch onto the assignment in a really fucking slick and mimetic way, you prodigy you.
Couple of traps I think you’re falling into: wink’n’nod poetic cleverness at times. (kate, feel free to linguistically destroy me if I’m making up linguistic terms here or using them incorrectly) you like to do this sort of homophonic recognition thing with your syntax, I,e. “tongue-sounds through his ear-holes.” “tongue-sounds” I can get behind, interesting phraseology and such, but ear-holes is jokey and feels like it’s there only to provide that feel of familiarity. I think you’re doing plenty of layering here of reflection without having to dive into that. I also think, at least in the first section, that you’re being artificially stringent with your meter and rhythm. which sort of compounds the problem, because when dashed words come up again (i.e. “dirt-coarse,” which itself is a little empty – why not just dirt lies?) the rhythm is essentially the same, and it becomes not a metered poem, but a poem with a small bag of tricks. But this is very nit-picky, but I am trying to be more helpful than saying that I is fantastic.
II uses a very soft second person address, which is nice and jarring next to the pig meat thing. two’s a tough one, because, rightly so and good job to you, for making my poet tendencies go “why’d you repeat these words so fucking much?” because it’s very intentional. I worry that the “light” thing, as knotty and interesting as it is, will be seen as something immaturish. “light” appearing three times on the same line is bold but maybe unnecessary? I’m in no way positive about this.
pig crying whee FUCK YES. The first line of section II just feels awkward, in an unintentional way I think. Stay away, if possible from the houses appearing in the second stanza. takes me out of light and dark and meet and rough ham tastes, and throws me back too explicitly. I know it’s there, I like the wolves and pigs, but if houses are getting blown down it might veer too close to retelling.
III is good, but I fail to understand the shortness of it. if it is just an expression of the gasping grunt of the body’s language, be a bit more expressive and non-meaning-based about it and make it something even shorter – or longer. Two lines feels like a standard 1-2 punch, and I think it could pack a bit more heat. Certain tiny bits of language you use, i.e. “one” in “one language” make descriptions melodramatic, rather than adding to the heft of it. “there is a language that flesh speaks” feels like a fucking revelation, and the statement should be, so why not go that route – trade a tone of expertise for a tone of ecstatic epiphany. That said, beautiful sentiment of course.
ReplyDeleteIV – listen, I’m not going to even talk about the reflected aspect, because you kill it form-wise in the piece. so let’s move on. I don’t like “voice thick with satisfaction” just b/c I think the “with” construction holds the line up – but that’s something to be tampered. the ? I’m not nuts over, but can be wrong, and I don’t really like or see how the paean to light and beauty at the end really ties it in. when you have the triple-light line earlier, it stays away from a sort of blanket sunny-ness by being so strange, light to the point of pain. The ending here feels weirdly nostalgic. some glory youth day of sun and being full, but might be my misreading.
V – only criticism is dirt-coarse. LOVE IT start to finish.
All these comments aside, as I said to you on the phone, this is very well done and really fucking THICK yo. first poem on Rod is money, Bendi. I would love to open a magazine and see this there. and if that did happen, I’d buy a subscription on the strength of this alone.
JP