As well, I dodge the poetry unless it is very short or has a curious title, which I ran into in the Nov 29, 2020.
The title is Flatline.
I have been meaning to read the poem to Rebecca but I can never find the issue at the same time as she is standing still.
So I read it today to Steve as he was eating breakfast.
I used my best poetry voice. By the time I got to the middle, I was wishing I had practised a few times because that may be my only performance.
FLATLINE
Things wear out. Also fingers.
Gnarling sets in.
Your hands crouch in their mittens.
Forget chopsticks, and buttons.
Feet have their own agendas.
They scorn your taste in shoes
and ignore your trails, your maps.
Ears are superfluous:
Wjhat are they for,
those alien pink flaps?
Skull fungus.
The body, once your accomplice,
is now your trap.
The sunrise makes you wince:
Too bright too flamingo
After a lifetime of tangling,
of knotted snares and lacework,
of purple headspace tornados
with their heartrace and rubble,
'you crave the end of mazes
and pray for a white shore
an ocean with its horizon;
not, so much, bliss
but a flat line you steer for.
No more hiss and slosh,
no reefs, no deeps,
no throat rattle of gravel.
It sounds like this:
-- Margaret Atwood
I have not read a lot of Atwood poetry. This was beautiful, funny, painful.
ReplyDeleteSo many of these lines in the poem are just normal for old people, so I wonder why I didn't write the pos em. And some of the line are normal for young people. In the cold of winter, we all crouch up our fingers in our mitts to keep them from freezing.
ReplyDeleteI like the words "forget chopsticks". If I hold them, the pain in my hands doesn't make getting to the food worthwhile.
I am wearing a top right now made by Wyona. It has a button opening down the front (that part is good), but at each space she has artfully placed 2 buttons and button holes, and the buttons are tiny and square. Twice the work. I don't think she had any thoughts of how hard these will be to do up for old people when she was making the outfit. I am not going to tell her how hard it is, since I am wearing the top, but it was an extra struggle. Oh, what I will do to make beauty trump comfort.
I keep the copy I clipped from the NYer on the board in my workshop (where it is anything but quiet)
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