Saturday, February 16, 2008

A hundred revisions and indecisions

Revision #2. Still no title.

Between the cat-scratch and neon burrs,
I heard the loose-chained bicycle sing

a lonely silken rustle down the street—
a dry whistle, like wind through wheat.

The schick of a rattlesnake
moving through leaves:

the same bitterness of its bite
and the heady forecast of its strike.

The four fangs pulled back into a snare
as white and lucid as streams of milk.

A reminder to stop rooting for the spring,
whose births multiply the earth like cancerous cells.

Crowding out the alder, dead from blight,
the vines wrapped around its shoulders

like the arms of mothers in Pompeii.
Like the stone grapes carved

on the mouth of a dish
one woman grips to her as she falls.



Thank you guys so much for all your comments! Let me know if you want me to return the service.

1 comment:

Chris S said...

I like it. The plate is a nice touch, changing it from an urn, but I think it works either way. I like the quicker flow to the new poem, but honestly, I like both poems. Some of what you had written in the previous one was good (like the line about sex), and the stream line version is nice as well, omitting things to make them bolder and more powerful.