that ribbon on which a pattern is marked.

 

 

Your hair has taken on the

smell of genitalia. Remember,

I am the man who snorts out secrets

like a two week old wild turkey

knows stone from snake. What bug

is a tasty morsel Haagen Dazs

together stream washed down with

rain water. And which one is

toenail strong, bitter seed

of sex gone horribly wrong.

Instinct is a m**********r, how

the earth in some desolate

wood of saxifrage pink deviation

is a pilgrimage of sorts; that

should I, in my clockwise empire,

love you now twofold? With one dimorphic

eye on your lady-bug brilliance

and the other on your strangulation.

I had wondered, blindfolded,

could you find me up to my

neck in leaves. Flightless,

bereft of

soul.

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

jesus...this is such a statement...you will make me flightless...you are bad for me...but damn i can't resist you...your lady bug brilliance, but all you leave me with is the smell of sex...there is little passion or love beyond that....you use me like a praying mantis...and discard me, or eat me...

i am strangled and yet enjoying every last breath of it.

[J.P. Bristow]

Okay seriously I freaking kowtow to your writing genius..........

[escherflight]

Each image merges into the next, each question asks another. I am left though with a final, easy image of loss.Infidelity does that every time, when discovered.

[Marie Anzalone]

I read works, and realize that a gifted writer selects every single word with razor-honed intent; unlike what many think, poetry is about far more than being elusive and vague. And so I read this, and I ask, "why?" Why does the hair smell like genitalia? Why compare strength to toenails? Why is the empire, clockwise?

Like with Leonard Cohen's "Last Year's Man," people bent on finding symbolism miss the fact that the singer is describing the room he is sitting in as he writes the piece. You describe peices of your own world here, stitched together to make some sort of quilt of cognizance. Which makes perfect sense, when one considers how cognizence actually works with nerves and impressions and impulses... and how we use it as a security blanket, until some piece of the patchwork takes us down memory lane into some uncharted emotional territory of remembrance. All bets are off- the memory becomes the usurper of will, and we crash our present into our past, breath catching. Clockwise.

[Emily B]

oh, dana, i thought about John yesterday, i wanted to post on his facebook page that life isn't better without him at all, but the tears got in the way, life is for the living, that's what they say

[Ma'at]

i agree with the other two reviews, the imagery is really strong and you're clearly very talented. what a great poem
-GS

[W.k.kortas]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I'm pretty sure that no other opening of a poem has ever opened with a direct comparison of the scent of hair and genitalia. I'm not giving away any state secrets when I say this poem is earthy--but it never feels gritty to me, and the final five lines have a certain wistful plaintiveness that will stand along anything in any love poem. It's a curious mixture to pull off--but you have, and then some.