[Something a bit different, not too serious, just thought of on a whim on my way to the bus stop :)]
No one writes about September worms,
those poor flesh strips undulating out of the grass
and onto asphalt roads,
escaping the inundation of autumnal downpour.
They wind themselves around puddles and cigarette butts,
much like their cousins,
the April worms,
but instead disgorging ululations that pulse silently through
their many hearts and stomachs –
an early lament
for the grass that is soon to be sheathed in frost
and their collapsing earthen labyrinths
pressed stubbornly through roots,
around voles, and moles and dormice
that will succumb to the sedative of sub-zero compounding.
September worms pull themselves out of wilting weeds,
animated Singapore vermicelli crawling from the takeout boxes of manicured lawns,
inching across concrete curbs,
between car tires,
and the boots of students on their way to their natural habitats of scholarly
enslavement,
just so that they can feel the air
on their naked ringed segments
before their soft-beating hearts slow
in the cumulative chill
of October snow,
preferring the brittle drying of dehydration
to mingle among the yellow maple leaves,
and leave behind crumbled bodies
with the promise for winter’s fall,
heavy as an eyelid,
to segregate the worlds of song and silence.
2 comments:
Marta, it's so good to read something from you again! I really liked this. It felt sort of unedited and spur of the moment (compared to the stuff I'm used to seeing from you), but it worked perfectly with the subject matter, which is slimy, creepy, fleshy, and come out when there's rain and mud.
I really loved the metaphor where the worms are compared to "animated Singapore vermicelli crawling from the takeout boxes of manicured lawns" and the end, I really like the end ("winter's fall / heavy as an eyelid" = poetic orgasm) except the last line, where it seems like your mind is just wandering forward lyrically, but your leaving behind what you've been talking about for the last 20+ lines with such descriptive verve. To steal from Eliot, you could have ended it with more of a bang, for me this is just a whimper.
That being said, it is a very pleasant poem, I enjoyed myself thoroughly reading and rereading it!
Thanks Charles! :) I felt that way about the last line too I have to say, but for some reason at the time I felt like I needed an additional line to end it. Now that I read it again though, I feel like just cutting that and ending on the eyelid imagery probably would work better. I'd wanted to sort of add in the music again, since I'd talked about their ululations, and then juxtapose it with the silence that I feel encompasses winter, using the imagery of division because you can cut worms again and again, but....yeah no didn't work that way :P I feel better about finishing a line early.
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