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mepresley's review
emotional
reflective
4.0
Excerpts from my favorite poems:
"the structure of pluto"
If there are dead vacationing in the eternal,
they might be torn here between attractions
of oblivion and remembrance.
Charon is half the size of its parent planet.
Death & its fan club thus revolve through weight
& gravitation almost
balanced: the one threatening to pull the other
into its frozen orbit.
....
...Someone has to care, if not me,
he'd thought; perhaps Someone has to care about me,
which phrases twined into one orbit, weighted
equally with their own cold
persuasions.
"night sweeper"
...you stood counting & counting rows of leaves.
12 piles now:
one for each couplet of my life. Still, you appeared torn
between them
as if every decision carried equal weight, every problem its own
terrific sorrow.
....
I should tell you how every year I plan to step down
& be reborn
sloe-eyed Aphrodite, in the gin-baths & blackjack of the damned.
"convocation"
Pain is a threshold that changes. Thus muses Bacon, 1597,
at the torture of John Gerard. This Jesuit priest they racked
and beat three years off & on. ...
....
...We don't like to think
what pressing would entail: the weights, at first enough
to be sustained, increased gradually till one's internal organs
burst. ...
In torture manuals the body's tender points are elaborately
labelled L & D, latus, dorsus, the head under its curve of C
drawn aghast with horror. It's amazing that they draw the pain.
....
...Perhaps to her what is of interest
about Bacon's torturing at the trial is not how he endured
the sight of men eviscerated, but that he went on
as a scientist who recommended repeated & controlled
experiments. The New Atlantis. After torture
what is pain? "It is not," Bacon wrote, "the lie
that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in,
& settleth in it, that doth the hurt." ...
"fire"
...Forget safety. Tell me more about accident.
What I recall
is not the splintered door or scorched lot but the fact the universe
gave me you.
....
What you don't
remember I do. That night in question--its arson, its accident--
it was the first moment
I knew how to love you.
"the structure of pluto"
If there are dead vacationing in the eternal,
they might be torn here between attractions
of oblivion and remembrance.
Charon is half the size of its parent planet.
Death & its fan club thus revolve through weight
& gravitation almost
balanced: the one threatening to pull the other
into its frozen orbit.
....
...Someone has to care, if not me,
he'd thought; perhaps Someone has to care about me,
which phrases twined into one orbit, weighted
equally with their own cold
persuasions.
"night sweeper"
...you stood counting & counting rows of leaves.
12 piles now:
one for each couplet of my life. Still, you appeared torn
between them
as if every decision carried equal weight, every problem its own
terrific sorrow.
....
I should tell you how every year I plan to step down
& be reborn
sloe-eyed Aphrodite, in the gin-baths & blackjack of the damned.
"convocation"
Pain is a threshold that changes. Thus muses Bacon, 1597,
at the torture of John Gerard. This Jesuit priest they racked
and beat three years off & on. ...
....
...We don't like to think
what pressing would entail: the weights, at first enough
to be sustained, increased gradually till one's internal organs
burst. ...
In torture manuals the body's tender points are elaborately
labelled L & D, latus, dorsus, the head under its curve of C
drawn aghast with horror. It's amazing that they draw the pain.
....
...Perhaps to her what is of interest
about Bacon's torturing at the trial is not how he endured
the sight of men eviscerated, but that he went on
as a scientist who recommended repeated & controlled
experiments. The New Atlantis. After torture
what is pain? "It is not," Bacon wrote, "the lie
that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in,
& settleth in it, that doth the hurt." ...
"fire"
...Forget safety. Tell me more about accident.
What I recall
is not the splintered door or scorched lot but the fact the universe
gave me you.
....
What you don't
remember I do. That night in question--its arson, its accident--
it was the first moment
I knew how to love you.
sam8834's review
4.0
A great short volume by a poet I stumbled onto through her work in various literary journals. Her poems manage to be accessible, without sacrificing boldness and uncensored honesty. Many of them are long and narrative in nature and keep the reader's attention all the way through to a fulfilling end, which is not an easy task in longer poetry.
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