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Butterfly Plague (Free verse) by zodiac
(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.

Down the ladder: Windfall

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Arithmetic Mean: 8.222222
Weighted score: 6.611111
Overall Rank: 593
Posted: April 10, 2005 10:09 PM PDT; Last modified: April 10, 2005 10:11 PM PDT
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Comments:
[0] Sashaclese @ 169.229.90.119 | 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 @ 212.118.19.111 > Sashaclese | 15-Apr-05/10:33 PM | Reply
You're a fucking hero.
[10] Goad @ 213.61.217.3 | 15-Apr-05/4:17 AM | Reply
Muted, soft, grey and lovely; with a flash of exhilaration at the end. Wonderful.
[7] bamf909 @ 63.26.112.238 | 23-Apr-05/5:40 PM | Reply
i like the imagery of moth wings beating against a window.
[n/a] zodiac @ 213.186.180.94 > 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 @ 64.252.101.156 | 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 @ 172.203.98.244 | 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.
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