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Butterfly Plague

Member since 2004 · Posted 10 Apr 2005 · Edited 10 Apr 2005 · 7 comments

(for Azar Nafisi) How moth-like it all is! - The wave when it comes carrying us wingthrumming against streetlamps and storewindows, battered but unbroken; the crowd below the palace - you could half-close your eyes (as I have now, imagining it for my children or great-grandchildren) and make its motion at once one and exquisite, patterned as a rug. The nature of revolution is at last solitary: our footsteps on plate-glass in dusk-quiet are as small as moths' wings beating on a screen. Mobbed, we hold dreams each our own, only, ash-fragile, in cupped hands - Here's a fire or lost father. Here's a naked-necked girl laughing in a square, thumbnail sawing an orange-skin. How grey and soft-bodied, these! How it seems impossible in this almost-silence they'd press until the very flame and not be devoured. Then a fist leaps up, then the god-almighty roar.

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mean 8.22 weighted 6.61 rank 592 views 341 View voting details →

9 votes so far. Yours would make 10.9 votes so far

7 comments

[0] Sashaclese 14-Apr-05/5:02 PM Reply

Well, you see? You convinced me to vote, and a god-almighty vote it is, indeed. And self-righteous, and controversy-evoking. Stay mediocre, yo. --0--

[n/a] zodiac › Sashaclese 15-Apr-05/10:33 PM Reply

You're a fucking hero.

[10] Goad 15-Apr-05/4:17 AM Reply

Muted, soft, grey and lovely; with a flash of exhilaration at the end. Wonderful.

[7] bamf909 23-Apr-05/5:40 PM Reply

i like the imagery of moth wings beating against a window.

[n/a] zodiac › bamf909 24-Apr-05/4:55 AM Reply

Thanks! Interestingly, that's really the only image in this poem, and I used it about 10 times in 20 lines. I'd have liked to have included more, but I just don't know that much about moths.

[9] Lenore 8-Jul-05/8:49 AM Reply

"Here's a naked-necked girl laughing
in a square, thumbnail sawing an orange-skin.
How grey and soft-bodied, these! "

Vivid image. I can smell the tang.

[8] Caducus 12-Jul-05/9:25 AM Reply

The title sucked me in and this part I wish I'd written :
Here's a naked-necked girl laughing
in a square, thumbnail sawing an orange-skin.

There is more too but I'm out of it.