Morning, a gray hair
poetry by
sscheckter
29 April 2002
10 comments
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Leather coats, loose bodies, dry hands gripping sweaty money.
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We, these strangers, jive like static, flyaway and tangled,
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hunkered down over lists in the chilly supermarket.
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eppy:
Three good lines. |
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Thank god I have a you to come home to because I have nothing
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intact, nothing unified, the day is streaked with doubt.
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eppy:
Don't like the two abstractions here. Maybe replace them with foodstuff so as to continue the metaphor? |
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Tell a man to buy bread, to stand in line, to care about moving up,
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and he'll do it. We slouch, clutching our bottles of dye and sealer,
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eppy:
"Tell a man...and he'll do it." Hmm. There's an aphoristic certainty in this statement that, for me, isn't really merited--I'm not convinced. Maybe others are? |
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samira:
No, I am not convinced either, though I am guessing that Sarah is getting at the idea that people can be programed into obedience, that they do not quesiton. Sarah, if I am correct (or if I am not and you are trying to get at something else) can you bring the idea out more concretely, with something that makes it more compelling? I am not right there in agreement with you, and I think you want me to be! |
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their neon girths so sterile, so distant. How do you kill something
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like an overgrown alligator, deep in water, from the shore?
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Boys with rifles pace the drab banks cracked with winter drought,
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eppy:
Oops, I'm lost. What happened to the supermarket? |
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the mutt in the truck raises hackles, the brown vinyl seats dusted gray,
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the smell of bleach, the windless heat, old baling twine colorless and
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frayed like a live wire,
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their boots printing cuneiform in the flaking stucco, then
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the chrome/blond flash, lightning, the slap and hiss of water, a stain
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oils to the surface, a silver zero widens, a single kinetic curse:
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metal.
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Each of the shoppers feels the pressure of timing:
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This is the last, She'll call to check, If I don't they'll leave.
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Thank god I have you to come home to because I have a nothing
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samira:
I might like the you to come out through the poem more. How does the "you" relate to the ideas throughout the poem? What comes from that connection? Is it more than the smallest smalltalk? And what is wrong with the smallest small talk with cashiers and the incidental people of your life? I find it to increased pleasantness rather than depressing patter. If it seems like something that you need to be kept from, you need to convince me of that... |
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that keeps me from making even the smallest smalltalk
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when a clerk mumbles, snapping gum, eyeing a white line
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on the brown hand where the ring was, "Think it's gonna rain?"
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eppy:
Maybe this is just me, but I thought both the image of the finger and the question were way too easy. The image seems like it's been done a lot and that surely there's something else you can focus on - hair, uniform, necklace? The question and response are kind of funny, which I don't think is the intended effect, and again strike me as a used-up trope. (It also strikes me as kind of condescending to the cashier, but that's a whole other issue, and is just me being bitchy, I'm sure.) |
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Any day now,
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any day.
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eppy:
The title is nice, but it seems to me to only have a tenuous connection to the poem. What do others think? |
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samira:
I am with Mike on this one--the connection is tenuous and I am wondering if making it clearer would help clarify other links in the poem. |
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Content © copyright 2002 by Sarah Elizabeth Scheckter. All rights reserved.