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Gothic (Free verse) by zodiac We used to say about him he
came flying north, just like he was
on wires, like some backwards gravity.
And once here he found he couldnât go back
south again because
a fear he had â of finding his black
motherâs body in the garage, eyes
tedious with indictment, damp dress
rucked up on her big mushroom-skin thighs
and coquettish for a sonâs caress,
leaned like sleep against some late-
model Buick, idled into emptiness:
That old rot-sweetness of tragedy, straight
out of our puritan wet-dreams. No, we weren't surprised
when it finally happened, but to him instead
and hanging in the place of gas: a tie
slung from a walk-in closet rod
in some sterile air-conditioned real estate
uptown, and his drunk undefeated grin, old red
clay on his dragging Oxfords, and a god
too proud or gone to let them catch his weight.
Up the ladder:
It was...
Down the ladder:
Be My Dove
Votes: (green: user, blue: anonymous)
Arithmetic Mean: 7.15
Posted: May 2, 2004 9:13 PM PDT; Last modified: May 2, 2004 9:25 PM PDTWeighted score: 7.048034 Overall Rank: 33 Comments:
[9]
deleted user @ 68.66.196.168
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3-May-04/8:28 AM
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Reply
A well-done story-poem. But I don't get the last line.
[7]
Shuushin @ 147.154.235.53
> deleted user
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3-May-04/10:50 AM
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Reply
I finally figured out the last line - still working on the rest.
This is a rather somber story, if I'm understanding it correctly.
Okay, Z - lets have a go at this...
I like the cadence of it, first off. "backwards gravity" got it, like it - falls up (geographically). then an image of the black mother (had to look up "rucked") making sexual advances (I see...) I liked the car "idled into emptiness"; left running - good. I wasn't able to associate with the rot-sweetness of tragedy or the puritan wet-dreams, but I understood it to be a description of something that may be a demographic universal. then there's the suicide scene (is it?) - which I think is a little rushed - or perhaps too complex. I liked the red clay on the shoes - does this mean she's been buried? Made me think so, anyway. I guess I'm not sure what exactly *is* going on in those last two-odd stanzas. A bit more sculpting maybe?
I think it's a bum cadence, and worse, it doesn't make any damn sense. I got the thing about the fear of a dead mother while delirious a few months ago with the superflu and posted it because it's right next to JBH's about a poet hanging himself and because it somehow appeals to me as a Southerner, despite myself.
I suppose on the most straightforward level, the mother is the betrayed motherland, which is how we actually think of it down here. Yes, we are a sick, sad people. Haven't you ever read any O'Connor? She's my thesis, by the way. And that, too, strikes me as faintly sad and absurd right now. The clay is on his Oxfords from his youth in the South. The mother's not really dead. Oxford is, incidentally, the Mississippi hometown of Faulkner.
Now, if you are going to purposefully post bum crap then correct someone (like me) who points out its not bad, then I aint gonna play anymore.
It is a little light in the sense department, but I give you the benefit of the doubt - don't make me regret it.
Sorry.
My solution: I'll try not to post more bum crap.
Yeah, if you could just do that from now on, that would be good. Thanks.
If you would just write some gruesome short stories, that would be 10 times more ace than this poetry fiddle-faddle.
Perhaps you've seen my medium-length piece, "The Gold Buggerer"?
I disagree. There is a poem in there. What you need is a well trained Ferret. As you know, I am not said Ferret. Put it back in the english wheel.
yawn - like a third grader's rumination.
Q: Can you honestly claim you came here for real criticism and not just to have yourself stroked by adolescent clingers-on?
A: No, because you're gay!
Pretentious git.
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