The Hymn of a Fat Woman.
Archive for year: 2008
Not Swans by Susan Ludvigson
I drive toward distant clouds and my mother’s dying.
The quickened sky is mercury, it slithers
across the horizon. Against that liquid silence,
a V of birds crosses-sudden and silver.
They tilt, becoming white light as they turn, glitter
like shooting stars arcing slow motion out of the abyss,
not falling.
Now they look like chips of flint,
the arrow broken.
I think, This isn’t myth-
they are not signs, not souls.
Reaching blue
again, they’re ordinary ducks or maybe
Canada geese. Veering away they shoot
into the west, too far for my eyes, aching
as they do.
Never mind what I said
before. Those birds took my breath. I knew what it meant.
Because You Left Me A Handful of Daffodils by Max Garland
I suddenly thought of Brenda Hatfield, queen
of the 5th grade, Concord Elementary.
A very thin, shy girl, almost
as tall as Audrey Hepburn,
but blond.
She wore a dress based upon the principle
of the daffodil: puffed sleeves,
inflated bodice, profusion
of frills along the shoulder blades
and hemline.
A dress based upon the principle of girl
as flower; everything unfolding, spilling
outward and downward: ribbon, stole,
corsage, sash.
It was the only thing I was ever
elected. A very short king.
I wore a bow tie, and felt
like a third-grader.
Even the scent of the daffodils you left
reminds me. It was a spring night.
And escorting her down the runway
was a losing battle, trying to march
down among the full, thick folds
of crinoline, into the barrage of her
father’s flashbulbs, wading
the backwash of her mother’s
perfume: scared, smiling,
tiny, down at the end
of that long, thin, Audrey Hepburn arm,
where I was king.
Simple stuff. Each day this week, I am going to post a poem for discussion on the web site and a link to discuss it in the forums. You need to an insightful comment or two on two of the poems; either an original observation or a response to someone else.
That’s it.
