Don’t look down
I watch as it falls silently, suspending as it were, on an invisible tether.
Calm, precise, neither fast nor slow, its mouth delivers the line that holds it
midair, spinning solemnly as the air wraps around it,
suspending as it were, as though speech were a rope, a noose, a lasso.
The closer I get, the more I cannot stop looking at it.
Its tiny eyes come into focus
I wonder
Can you see me?
(It was never as easy to kill
the ones that were so blatant. Those tucked in corners
offered less guilt and much less fascination.)
I am certain that it sees me because it stopped
in front of me
as though I were some discovery, some distant shore
to lay claim to, if it could only be sure
how to navigate the sea of air to reach the beach that is my lip or lobe.
And because I am certain
that at this point it is thinking solely of itself, I think of my own self.
The many words that I have hung from ceilings
like tissue paper cutouts, the constant eye
contact, seeing nothing more than my own reflection in another’s pupils.
If it is looking at itself in my eyes, I am not surprised.
What surprises me is the courage with which it meets death
as my hand comes from underneath
because it does not move.
_______
"and i can go on and on and on... but who cares?"
-GB
1 comment:
After reading all three of these poems, I find it very ironic that you call your poetry section "Not Prose," because you've written all three in this voice that is very much a prose narrator. In that I think that this poem is suffering from very much of the same wordy-itis sypmtoms of the first two.
As always your imagery is amazing, if you stop being an over protective mother and allow them to try and walk on their own. To be able to transform such a trite act as killing a bug into something worth thing about requires talent. I think about this one, much like tha last, wher eyou need to go through and just extract the main images. You have a lot of beuatiful moment (as though I was some distant shore; how to navigate the sea of air;offered less guilt and less fascination), that are being strangled by explainations in the poem. Give the readers a chance to bring their own glue. That's why people like poetry, because unlike prose, they can make it mean something to them...not just follow the readers intentions. This poem could swing to make some side with the spider or side with the narrator. But you didnt make us side with either...you just killed the spider. There was no triumph or sympathy, which is balanced with the amount of intrigued that is garnished by the trite act. You build us up, just to say its no big deal. Just push the ending.
Oh, and I have the same problem, but stop saying "I wonder"...I know that already otherwise you wouldnt put the next line in italics and frankly you wouldnt be writing the poem...
And yet there is so much potential if you let your reader be as smart as you are.
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