yearned more longly longingly."
~ James Joyce, Ulysses, 172 - 73
Coming across the above line in Ulysses in 1978, inspired me to attempt a poem on the same gut sensation:
The Ache You Wear
You fall into her arms like crying,
feel her lips in your hair,
soothing like a parent
and something else.
Wooden and broken,
you lean rigidly.
Your forehead rests against breasts
which must be like your own.
With each soft motion,
the ache you wear like a brace
begins to melt, drips
slowly down your back.
Like congestion, it seeps inside,
fills the space between every rib,
then tatters into loose bits
that choke upward and sink within you.
Yearning for a familiarity,
you move toward this woman
and this one comfort
after taking leave of him.
For this time you fall away
from any pain.
Thick rags are floating
now in your stomach.
on my current post
~ "Longly, Longingly" ~
@ The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker:
A Fortnightly [every 14th & 28th] Literary Blog of
Connection & Coincidence; Custom & Ceremony
Poet & professor Joseph J. Benevento : "A dozen or so years ago, I invented a form of poetry called the "After" poem; it had very simple rules, the title of the poem had to start with the word "after," and there would be 26 lines, 5, 5 line stanzas and a one line coda."
ReplyDeleteBased on this formula, I re-did the above poem, just for discipline (& fun!):
After Taking Leave of Him
You fall into her arms
like crying,
feel her lips in your hair,
soothing like a parent
and something else.
Wooden and broken,
you lean rigidly.
Your forehead rests
against breasts
which must be like your own.
With each soft motion,
the ache you wear
like a brace
begins to melt, drips
slowly down your back.
Like congestion, it seeps inside,
fills the space between every rib,
then tatters into loose bits
that choke upward
and sink within you.
Yearning for a familiarity, you move toward
this woman and this one comfort
after taking leave of him.
For this time you fall away
from any pain.
Thick rags are floating now in your stomach.
From Joe B.:
A really fine poem and I think you used the "After" form to your advantage -- it all tries to lead to a big last line. And you had some excellent teachers [Andrew Grossbardt, Jim Thomas, and Jim Barnes]"