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Best left unsaid (trust first instincts edit, w/thanks) (Free verse) by ecargo

My tongue’s loose slide would soon let slip this truth, bruised blue, behind these sentinel teeth. We meet. Touch. Fuck. We seldom speak much more than surface gloss-- from niceties to wordless heat, we move. With your hand warm on my neck, I swallow words thick with promise, glistening like larva trapped in tissue webs, my palate ridged as a whale's. Words grow pallid as mushrooms in the echoless dark, slick with the sweat of caves. I want to devour you, a carnal glide, deep as a worm, down, down, in my rich earth.

ecargo 24-Jan-06/8:56 AM
The problem being . . . what, exactly? The workshop-y results?

Why do you think journals are rejecting workshopped poems? Is it the sameness of voice, do you think? (Is there a sameness of voice? It seems to me as if there is, but I don't read a lot of poetry journals; most of what I read is in non-poetry-specific mags like The New Yorker and Yankee Mag, etc.--i.e., pubs w/ a history of, but not a focus on, poetry.) I don't mind longer, "nontrad" layouts or odd breaks if there's a purpose to it, but I think you're right that it's done more for "shock" value or "to be different" (though it's been done and done and done for ages now) than for any purposeful, thoughtful reasons.




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