My own assignment (after a hundred years)
The theme shouldn't be that hard to ascertain. The dream has stuck with me for a while. I don't know if it's represented here in a way that I'm completely comfortable with, but it's a fairly honest retelling. Cheers.
-B.
untitled
I am certain of nothing.
The waking, the wet heat like a blanket, dis-
oreinted wet, hot and close. I am certain
of nothing, but
the dream returns in fragments.
I.
Steel, or
his arms, or
the way they give nothing away. I'm sixteen
and his eyes are cool, mirrors
reflecting only themselves.
II.
He calls me closer and mind harrows the body:
my symptom a stiffness, this stiffness a sickness; I want
dear lord,
I want.
III.
There is an innocence in the way we lie, almost chaste
head to his hard-soft torso, his metal, flesh and tone
his dog tags
jingle when I reach for them.
When I wake, I am certain only of the wetness,
the slick hot heat as sticky as some fading dream.
"I want // dear lord, / I want."
ReplyDeleteThanks for typifying my life experience.
Sir B-alot:
ReplyDelete1) You need a title, most definitely. The brevity and sparseness of space and language would be made so much stronger with a title. Or not, if you've got a good argument of [untitled] I'm jonesing to be persuaded.
2) Fuck yeah and a double nod to Kate's comment.
3) For some yet unknown reason, I LOVE:
Steel, or,
I revel in it as an opening to the numbered bits, or as an anything moment, really.
B,
ReplyDeleteWriting this while listening to this mysterious new radiohead song. so if things feel distracted and spiraling, you know why.
I don’t like “untitled” because it signals to the reader inability. Which I think is my primary problem with the piece – it’s willing to give the game away. It is so totally unwilling to leave any space to mystery within the dream, that it overcompensates. Which is an interesting tool, and approach, but I think it’s too set up here as a mechanism for the author, than a mechanism for the speaker. Untitled is a signal of the approach; a unspecific signal, but one nonetheless.
I like the preamble section before the “sectional” sections, it’s a cool move. But the form already is designed as a preamble. It’s natural for it to be read as the preamble to a sectional piece. “but // the dream returns in fragments” is a clear set up for the reader…. a set-up they probably did not need, and kind of makes the proceedings a bit too easy. I guess I think it undersells your piece, which is a shame because it sort of navigates by touch (to steal my own line), it brings the reading through the instances of the poem through sensory stimuli only. The only moment of reflexivity is the “I want” moment, which operates on the same level as the sensations – something primal and unfuckwithable, a permeation of desire. But that line is ruined, sorta, by the end of the preamble. It turns from a permeation to an editorial. It becomes another signifier for the avoidance of interpretation/dream puzzling. You have a moment, the “dog tags,” where an unknown element enters (I’m calling it an unknown element) and creates something outside of the realm of comprehensible experience – an important detail, unexplained but noticed. It’s beautiful in a weird way. And takes the poem somewhere else.
ReplyDeleteI think some of the line breaks work against the poem. “his dog tags / jingle….” is a bit too magnified. Like it has a sign on it declaring difference with the poem. It is different and important, but should be subsumed a bit but still noticeable, because that’s the dreamscape, yeah?
I think it’s easy to break at “chaste.” Same with “I’m sixteen.” It feels like they’re end-lined for emphasis, which feels a bit like cheating. Because those two carry quite a lot of judgment on their shoulders – they bring with them a weirdly moral element, and end-lined feels like a.) giving away the puzzle, and b.) like they are only there for a punch of meaning.
ReplyDeleteThe repetition tool here is used well - the I want, the stiffness, the ors, etc. But “wet” in the preamble doesn’t really work, syntactically, for repetition. It’s weird that the reader should feel as though the author is full of confidence in writing, but for some reason because there’s more word-distance between those two “wets”, it feels like the speaker was unable to find a synonym for wet. Which, now that I think about it, might be pretty awesome and transgressive. So keep going with it.
So, after all of that, which is nitpicky but is hopefully more of a close reading, I really love, like I said earlier, the sort of description-by-feel thing here. It’s a surprisingly non-visual poem, in terms of senses. Which is really difficult. I’d think about doing even more along those lines, trying to represent the scene without invoking sight. within the dream paradigm, that’d be pretty outstanding.
So yeah. I’m a fan. obvi.
-JP