poem
Found object in Nick Flynn's The Ticking is the Bomb: a prompt, from a piece of paper he found on the floor in a school hallway: All living things have shoulders. The only words on the discarded page. He tries to write a poem incorporating the line, then contends that the line - period - is the poem. He's probably right, but what the hey:[blob & foot]
All living things have shoulders
Stentor, Blepharisma, Bursaria, Vorticella
Euglena & Volvox & rotifers
(If you study pond water samples, you will see rotifers)
Proteus - that classic high school protozoan -
Four-year letterman, Beta Club,
Science Club VP
Shouldering up to the bar at
Day's end, Oasis
In the midst of brouhaha
Calcification yet a dream
Glory daze long past
The morning's vigils
The everdreams
Calling to blob
& foot & flagella
Heavy brooding through
The night's stem, till
Last call sounds
Like the rumble of time
in the axials &
mercy finds the near
& dear,
need & desire,
envy & want.
Labels: peranema
posted by murat11 at 7:19 AM
9 Comments:
I'm chuckling about the thought of protozoa with shoulder pads.
Teresa: I should have italicized that classic high school protozoan, as the words were cribbed right off a site dedicated to microscopic "critters" one can find in a pond. It helped give me a leg up on those shoulders.
Love the way this tapers down to the graceful stem of mercy. "Everdreams"--a really good word, especially in such proximity to "blob." There's knowingness there, Paschal. Lovely.
Always good to have your words, San. Must be doings over at The View; gotta go check things out!
I'm having a Disney-esque vision of Fantasia of the amoeba, rainbow colored single celled animals performing synchronized swimming to Bach. Brouhahas and glory daze and everdreams - magical stuff that! Another poet introduced. The few I found online went places I've never been. I liked the visit but I don't think I'd want to live there.
So what kind of cars does a "classic high school protozoan" drive in Tres Leches? Does it go to sock hops, do the twist? It's gotta have knees to go with those shoulders.
No disrespect to the awesomely talented Mr. Flynn, but those sure look like shoulders to me on Ms. Peranema. Tiny, mind: probably a bit of an eating disorder. It's tough being a microorganism these daze . . .
Teresa: Gotta have knees to be Science Club VP, for sure. All that scrambling around the ponds. Orange Bronco on the wheels front. Them protozoans iz big boyz.
Dee: I'm not concerned about Mr. Nick. I wandered into his memoir yesterday and something about it captured me: I liked the "Alan Dugan" poem because it (and a lot of his narrative writing) conflates all the paper scraps in his mind's rodent's nest (he might prefer monkey mind): as a veteran conflater myself, I felt some kinship. Liked the rabbit hole I fell into.
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