Sixteen years old and up to her teeth in blush-yellow romance;
the tyranny has got ahold of her and we can only apologize.
I know how it goes, when I was sixteen and in love myself,
he could have said, 'obey me,' and I would have obeyed, not
knowing the that food of romance is disobedience. Not knowing
that the food of tyranny is circles of pink grapefruit time.
My eyes are heroic in their attempts not to coexist with yours
and you can only make our apologies to her for our
deliriously bad example; you can only hang your head when I
flirt my fingers through their air and the strings of orange confetti
to where you wait quietly in a chair to where I stand asthmatically
in the center of the floor. Chestfall after chestfall our heartbeats,
arrhythmic and scared, echo down the sun aslant in the front halls
of our bodies.
Seeth and chain braids of salmon-ribbon into ties for me; tie them
around my rib cage and trail them from my ankles and wrists. Tell her
we apologize for our failure to communicate with each other and tell her
the food of love is dark and well-polished like a life-red apple and not
blush-yellow like this pecan fruit. Let us pray for tall friends to hide behind.
blush-yellow
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"the food of romance is disobedience".
ReplyDeleteGonna write this down and keep it somewhere safe.
Maybe just the whole thing.
i could be predictable, and comment that i don't like romance, and that i'm tired of running away, but i do like the last stanza, very much, yes.
ReplyDeleteI am afraid you might have missed the point of this piece, Tala.
ReplyDeleteI love the colours. They are just too wonderful.
ReplyDeleteP.S. The "about" is kind of ominously creepy. Or at least I choose to take it that way.
ReplyDeleteyet i feel often that i miss the "direct" intention of a piece and I assumed it was a joint effort on the part of the conveyor and the conveyed-to, to understand the understandable and discern that the unconveyable as been partially conveyed. All this talk of conveyer belts and no real concept. Tala, Tala, you think too much to be a critic of EVERY piece of art.
ReplyDeletewhy do people always assume that when i mention something i could have said, that i actually think that?
ReplyDeletemaybe i got the point, and that's why i didn't say what i said i wouldn't say.
:P
Because if you say what you could have said, we wonder why you had to say it at all if you didn't mean it to some extent but were avoiding saying it directly for fear of causing offense.
ReplyDeleteWell, Jesse has pretty much said what I thought, but if you didn't miss the point you need only mention what you thought it was.
ReplyDeleteAnd no, I don't expect people to 'get' my poems. I write them for me, but I leave them open-ended; they are meant to be interpreted.
But that doesn't mean there's not a wrong way.
i was commenting on my inadequate range of responses to poems generally, and my knee-jerk reaction to words like "romance," rather than avery's poem. the purpose of mentioning that i could have said ______ was to expose my inability to read poems with a learning ear, or, my lack of respect for words.
ReplyDeletei would never halfway-insult avery's poems.
I like the last stanza too.
ReplyDeleteAnd the last sentence is something I'd expect to find in a brilliant song, like something by Bright Eyes or Neutral Milk Hotel.
"wrong way" would be how some people interpret recurring symbols. "and that carrot represents the finite poise of human grace in the midst of chicken-pox epidemics." i think people get the idea. Tala, by the way, I like how you never comment on the piece, I wouldn't change it for a sponge cake. Maybe an oatmeal scone.
ReplyDeletei do sometimes!
ReplyDeleteyes, but with me, "never" means, "Somewhat almost rarely on a good day"
ReplyDelete