Beemouse Laboratories

Sometimes I wander into the NSCC library and check out magazines for no reason. The last time I was in, I checked out an issue of Poetry Northwest. I found a couple poems that I liked.

Aperture

Even though it was only last night
I keep turning to the image of you
leaning in to kiss me
as if it were an old photograph.

The early moonlight on your face,
the open doorway. I keep entering
and then leaving the frame.

And every time I bend into the glossy edge,
I see the small shadow I cast across your body
hover, and then lift
like something briefly darkening the lens.

-Danusha Laméris

Hm, well after typing it, I don’t like it as much as I did before. I like the sentiment and the imagery, but I don’t like the language so much. I think I would put the thoughts in a different order.

I also liked the following poem, because it’s pretty bitter and cruel, which surprises me. At least it feels bitter. I don’t know if it’s meant to be taken that way. Maybe just angry. Maybe sour grapes.

I am trying to break your heart

I am hoping
to hang your head

on my wall
in shame–

the slightest taxidermy
thrills me. Fish

forever leaping
on the living room wall–

paperweights made
from the skulls

of small animals.
I want to wear

your smile on my sleeve
& break

your heart like a horse
or its leg. Weeks of being

bucked off, then
all at once, you’re mine–

Put me down.

I want to call you thine

to tattoo mercy
along my knuckles. I assassin

down the avenue.
I hope

to have you forgotten
by noon. To know you

by your knees
palsied by prayer.

Loneliness is a science–

consider the taxidermist’s
tender hands

trying to keep from losing
skin, the bobcat grin

of the living.

- Kevin Young

I don’t like that poem either, after typing it. What does taxidermy have to do with a broken heart? (It reminds me of people who have their dead dogs stuffed so they can put them in their living room and still pet them.) Maybe the author is talking to himself. What if he’s trying to break his own heart? That would make more sense to me.

It’s strange to think of someone laboring so long over a poem, getting the words just right, deciding to use “&” instead of “and”… and then me, reading the poem, failing to understand it or feel compelled to really understand it, moving on to the next thing. Poor poets. I bet they work the hardest, and for the smallest return.

Jen struggles with socks, 2009