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Napowrimo

napowrimo #24-28

Greeku

An old man in a suit
gathers wild fennel from the verge.
A wryneck calling.

Fried Beauty

Glory be to cod for battered things,
for chips as golden-glisten as a suntanned thigh;
for fresh-made doughnuts, croutons, chicken wings.
All things that saute, sizzle, fry,
praise them.

A poem

Her breath is vine leaves, crushed in the hand,
and her sweat is green olives.

Under the plane tree three old men
watch the shadows creep across the square.

His hair is the wing of a swallow
his mouth a pebble wet from the stream.

Sitting in doorways headscarved women
slowly and precisely stitch.

In all the village the only sound
is the rustle of lizards.

Aphorism, shamelessly made into a poem via the addition of line breaks

A poem should be true;
not like an axiom,
but like a bell.

6 replies on “napowrimo #24-28”

Good ones, Harry – Fried Beauty really tickled my fancy. It’s this line, though, that intrigues me most…

his mouth a pebble wet from the stream.

I like it for the initial image it gives me although I’m not sure if I fully ‘get it’ yet, you know? Does it mean his mouth is small? hard? smooth? I get the implication/inference of being wet or moist which makes me wonder if you really need ‘wet’ in that line at all.

Nice read; will ponder more (or am I missing something that’s simple and obvious?) :-)

Thanks everyone. Ideally I would expand Fried Beauty to the full length of the poem it’s parodying, but the idea of making a serious attempt to parody Hopkins for more than a few lines makes my head hurt.

Scotty: I’m slightly reluctant to dissect the image after the event, beyond saying that it seemed good when I came up with it, but it’s a fair question.

I guess if I was forced to explain why I picked it, I’d say that the qualities of the pebble I would hope were effective would be that it’s compact, firm, attractive, moist, and ephemeral because once a wet pebble dries, it’s just a dry pebble. And that the hardness seemed appropriately masculine, given that most of the images I was coming up with were flowers and suchlike.

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