in which bigscary giraffe discovers not writing is not good
so here it is: the terrible & the ugly. enjoy
for twenty years nothing but needles
i. hospital gown
it's never quite as clean as television--
rolls of tape on the floor, the sound of rubber snap
the sound of mistake, the sound of collapse
but and now I've got the light on her now
looking at wrinkles and her nakedness
which comforts as if to say I've been there before
and I'm going back.
ii. electric paddles
the pipe in the throat is the wrong sort of pipe
but is there to do the breathing like that unnatural resurrection
she twice performed on my goldfish.
but now it is my turn to arrange the pellets,
filter the water, breathe.
iii.
and I won't rifle through her purse till she's long
and clean and dead.
iv. transfusion
the difference between iodine and blood is the belief
that you aren't bleeding six needle pokes
and four nurses and I'm still unconvinced we're made
of the same stuff but here I have this finger
and this nose that maps the difference as not so great.
v. gauze
blood feels like spit when you don't look
but the trouble is I was and the stain spread
on my glasses, a wet slide prepared by sophomores.
it takes longer than it should to bleed
after a first hit- the check, pierce, pause
then the horror! of wanting to fuck
but getting bled on instead
vi. flat line
the day she died happens many times
with the same cocktail:
I'm lying on the floor with her clothes vivisectioning
those buried lines, those purposeful mine-fields
looming my blood gray.
Nice!
ReplyDeleteGood to have you back ADC. I'm gonna jump right in here.
There are places where the narrative starts to take up too much space, if that makes sense. For example in section v.: "a wet slide prepared by sophomores / it takes longer than it should to bleed" Those lines aren't singing to me like others in this poem are. For example: "the day she died happens many times / with the same cocktail" (vi) that's evocative and has the narratological pull that you're going for without being unwieldy.
My advice would be going through the poem and just chopping shit out wholesale to see which lines are just advancing the story and which ones are pure poetry. The poem is so concerned with this sense of wrongness and confusion - you achieve that admirably and you have a framework (title and section titles) that does a lot of your explanation for you - so that should be freeing you up to be as fast and loose as you want. Go nuts!
That's the bad (esque). The good is that this poem makes me bodily uncomfortable, so you've certainly evoked something.
"and I won't rifle through her purse till she's long / and clean and dead." is my favorite line/section. It's so short. Punchy. Gorgeous. Grotesque.
I also love (adore?) some of your line breaks: "blood is the belief" (iv), the aforementioned line especially.
I'm not 100% sold on the last tercet. Something about the rhyme makes it feel sort of forced to me, I think.
Overall I think it was a good first effort back.
-B.
(also, you owe us an assignment. You curly haired rogue)
I agree with B., so I'm gonna piggy back off of him.
ReplyDeletei. last two lines of i., I like it, but it's a sort of emotional feeling that's dropped in, not explained, but gesturing for a punch. it's a big sort of feeling, but it feels like a cap on the stanza rather than a growth of it.
section ii., "like that unnatural resurrection / she twice performed on my goldfish" is an omission, yes, but framed deeper - it's a half-aside, which is cool, but then when the poem continues with the fish imagery it doesn't resonate as much as it might otherwise. Maybe a detail or two more, a hint at some part of this unnatural resurrection, so I get really into figuring out whatever it is.
Section iii., boss.
last line of sectino IV. deflates the tension of the section I think, wrapping it up a bit easy. let it be complex.
v. actually worked for me, in a creepy, creepy way.
vi. first two lines are so baller.
I like it, and there's so much raw material here. so much of this fascinates me, esp. like bendi said the syllogistic quality of that first line in iv. don't stop don't stop don't stop. keep going.