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Post by Sarah Leidhold on Mar 22, 2016 0:23:29 GMT
I.
Bottle blooms
into bullet hole;
she brings it
to her lips
slowly,
like prayer hands
to a furrowed brow.
Carefully she sips,
as if it sloshed
with secrets
that shan’t
be spilled.
Eyes clenched,
she presses
it against
the patient kiss,
cold as a barrel
(metal),
hard like hipbone
(bruised).
Beer smells
like the back
of his hand
before it
meets her cheek.
She pretends
to gulp;
teeth-clenched
like a fist
that refuses
to be palm-read.
Thick branches
of her family tree
bear down upon
her taste buds;
the oak is thirsty
at its roots.
The bark
demands the bite.
II.
I wrote this poem
on the bar napkins
her full drink
did not dampen.
She left early,
9:03 PM.
I said “wait,”
a selfish plea.
She whispered to me,
“I don’t want to fail
because of someone
else’s mistakes.”
I held those words
there in my hand,
pressed them through
a wooden colander,
sliced up their syllables
and sewed them back
together with silver spool;
I held them up
to the green bar light
until they were no longer
a little dead bird,
feet up in fear,
surrendering,
but something else entirely.
A fierce faced fox
who left no prints
in the snow as it
fled- no, not fled-
walked free.
III.
I saw her there,
on my half-blurred walk home,
in the local creamery-
sitting booth-side
cradling her dripping cone.
A healthy pink
tongue was taking long
licks of some
lavender cream.
There was a paper-crown
atop her freckled face;
she has reached ten
ice creams this month.
Her eyes blinked deeply
in pleasure, just like her mother’s.
And her grin was exactly
like her father’s-
except it was her own.
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Post by Alexandra Bishop on Mar 23, 2016 11:58:24 GMT
One of the biggest troubles I have with poetry is deciphering the meaning, so please forgive me if my analysis is a off! A woman, sitting alone at a bar to escape her abusive husband and, if comparing the bottle to bulletholes, ends up taking her own life? That's what I got out of it, anyway, but either way the loneliness she felt and be desire of the speaker to help her was overwhelming. This was just so sad to me. I could easily see this happening in reality, a you battered mother finding solace in a bar. What I'm. Most curious about is the speaker's relation to the mother and their feelings towards her. Like, was he just a random patron who was drawn to her sorrow? A good soul who wanted to help ease her pain? A casual observer or even a storyteller dying to find the next bit of drama to write about?
I think the part I loved the most, though was the image of the dead bird. My parent's house has a large bay widow in the living room. On the outside of the window there's a small overhang, and beyond that is a large rhododendron that reaches up to the roof. We hung a ton of bird feeders from the ovrerhand, and the birds hide in the bushes before jumping to the feeders. Sometimes we have 50-60 birds waiting for their turn to eat and, with so many visitors, it's inevitable that one of them will be stupid and fly full tilt into the window. We put up stickers and everything so that they know it's a solid surface, but like I said, some of them are stupid. Most of the time they're just dazed for a few minutes and fly away, but sometimes they hit the glass so hard that their necks snap. I've had to go out several times to throw the dead birds into the woods away from the feeders so that they don't scare the other birds off, and the imagery of their feet was just so perfect. It's such a powerful symbol, something so delicate and free just dying, and it fits so well with the misery of the mother and the health of the child. It gave me the shivers, and I found myself smiling. In part because I'm a sick son of a bitch, mostly because it was such an amazing use of imagery. I'm legitimately half in love with that stanza! And the sickly green light he holds the words up to? Beautiful! Once again, you hit it out of the park and restore my faith that one of us might be equal to T.S. Eliot (who I'm pretty much neutral about,to be honest. It's just a really fun name to say while shaking your head and sighing.)
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Post by Sarah Leidhold on Mar 23, 2016 15:59:52 GMT
Alex, thank you so much for your close and careful reading. I admire your drive to decipher the meaning in a poem. One of my favorite things about poetry is the ability it has to tell a different story to each person reading it. I wrote this inspired by a story of addiction- like perhaps a daughter who has a father with alcohol addiction, which causes her to feel anxiety around drinking alcohol. I've written about this before because it is a story very personal to me; and often I find myself going very heavy-handed with it. This time, I stepped out of my first person comfort zone and decided to kind of try it a little more mysterious- what it might look like to someone on the outside.
I could choose to feel like maybe if that wasn't communicated to you clearly then I failed in expressing it. But I think I'm going to take this as a triumph. It's so cool to me that you could find a totally new and previously unimagined thread of narrative in the words. Even if I didn't paint the image with intense clarity- it made you feel something, it reminded you of something, it made you think. That's really the goal when I share my work. So thank you for sharing your interpretation. You understood my metaphors and arranged them in your own way. I think that's brilliant. And it works! Poetry is like a kaleidoscope- I put all the beads there and you held it up to the light and found a pattern that spoke to you. I love it.
To answer your question, I do not know exactly who that man is; I think he is a friend. A new friend learning about this person. Now that you asked, I want to know more about him too.
Your story about the birds is so touching; thank you for sharing that. It sounds like quite a scene to watch. You're very brave for picking up those tiny corpses. I'm so glad the words could evoke a memory for you like that. That makes me so glad. Thank you so much for your generous compliments! I feel like this is a safe place that I can experiment and try weird things. I appreciate you asking questions and finding the value in them. I look forward to reading your piece!
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Post by Alexandra Bishop on Mar 23, 2016 16:42:34 GMT
I could choose to feel like maybe if that wasn't communicated to you clearly then I failed in expressing it. But I think I'm going to take this as a triumph. It's so cool to me that you could find a totally new and previously unimagined thread of narrative in the words. Even if I didn't paint the image with intense clarity- it made you feel something, it reminded you of something, it made you think. That's really the goal when I share my work. So thank you for sharing your interpretation. You understood my metaphors and arranged them in your own way. I think that's brilliant. And it works! Poetry is like a kaleidoscope- I put all the beads there and you held it up to the light and found a pattern that spoke to you. I love it. My lack of understanding is why I apologized; I don't think you failed either! Poetry has always been difficult for me. I feel like it's a giant inside joke played against me. How can so many people come to the same conclusion and yet I'm off in left field picking grass? I have no idea! But the feelings you conveyed, the sadness, the loneliness, the effect it has on the other's around them, came through, even if I didn't really understand the story behind it. I appreciate the language of poetry, and the way that your words flow together to convey an emotion as opposed to just a story; it's a concept I've been trying to bring to the prose I write, with varying degrees of success. The fact that I'm duller than a lead brick has everything to do with me misinterpreting things and nothing to do with anyone's writing skills, so please forgive this humble potato. |
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Post by Sarah Leidhold on Mar 23, 2016 18:58:51 GMT
You don't need to apologize at all; I'm so glad you found something meaningful and emotional in it. That's what matters to me. Thank you for saying all of that. I am also still practicing balancing my expression of emotion with clarity of meaning. It's always a process. What matters is that we're exchanging ideas! I love it. You are not a potato at all. But if you were, you would be the best potato ever harvested!  |
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Post by Cullen on Mar 25, 2016 2:04:32 GMT
this poem almost seemed to bite into me. the sadness felt in every line is just so profound. I felt the close corelation between the bottles and bulletholes. my family members have been known to have a few to many from time to time. i wished to be capable of reaching inot the literature in order to comfort those that were hurt.
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Post by Sarah Leidhold on Mar 26, 2016 22:38:30 GMT
this poem almost seemed to bite into me. the sadness felt in every line is just so profound. I felt the close corelation between the bottles and bulletholes. my family members have been known to have a few to many from time to time. i wished to be capable of reaching inot the literature in order to comfort those that were hurt. Thank you so much for reading and for this generous comment. I appreciate your empathy and it makes me feel so glad that the poem could elicit such strong sentiment from you. |
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