Monday, January 05, 2009

Posing Nude in the Snow ( a poem)

oops, I revised it: Here's the new version, older one underneath:


Posing Nude in the Snow

I hold a plate of eyeballs the size of fish eyes.
Round. They stare in every direction, with irises
olive drab. I tip the plate toward my mouth
and pour them in. They smush on my tongue
like capers, salty, sour and sharp. Some escape
to look inside my mouth and belly. Perhaps
they will see my heart: a burned out cinder. A hunk
of graphite. Stone masons attack at it with hammers
and chisels, trying to recarve stone into a facsimile
of love, but the eyeballs all know better.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
For Jim Doran, Bagelboy and Mike Kline
And for Lottie, Rhonda, Dawn and Janine
090105-1950-1c
(Now you know why I don’t have any friends, LOL!)


Posing Nude in the Snow


I hold a plate of eyeballs about the size of fish eyes.


Round. They stare in every direction, with irises


olive drab. I tip the plate toward my mouth


and pour them in. They smush on my tongue


precisely like capers, salty, sour and sharp.


Some escape to look inside my mouth and belly. Perhaps


they will see my heart: a burned out cinder. A hunk


of graphite. The stone masons carve at it with hammers


and chisels, trying to remake stone into a facsimile


of love but the eyeballs all know better.



Mary Stebbins Taitt

For Jim Doran and Mike Kline

And for Lottie, Rhonda, Dawn and Janine

090105

(Now you know why I don't have any friends, LOL!)


--
I am certain of nothing but the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination- John Keats
Mary

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Amazing, Mary. I love it! Thank you.

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

LOL! I wrote it for myself, but it made me think of YOU! Hee he hee!

Genie Sea said...

The imagery is raw and honest. I cringed reading some of it, but it was an awed cringe :)

pssst: I'll be your friend :) hehe

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

Thanks for your friendship, Genie!

:-D


(You don't happen live near Detroit, do you?)

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

Oh, no, you live in Toronto. We'll have to be long distance friends.

Kara Chipoletti Jones of GriefAndCreativity dot com said...

Mary, thank you so much for sharing this poem with our heART blog fest! It's beautiful and poignant. Looking forward to part two if you decided to add it to this post...
lots of miracles to you...
k-

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

Thanks so much, K

or 1000 faces.

I'm not sure how this works, am I now supposed to add anything else to THE SAME POST?

Kara Chipoletti Jones of GriefAndCreativity dot com said...

Hi again, Mary! Yes, if you make one post that is your Festival share, that's the link we share up on the Fest day.

So you could just add to this post as it is the link that's already in the Mister Linky on my blog. That's fine.

Or if you'd rather do a new post sharing something specifically for Fest with more stuff, then I can take down the link in Mister Linky and you can replace it with another when you are ready.

Make sense?
Thanks for playing along!
k-

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

I think if you can stand the hassle of changing the link, I would prefer to start a new one now that I understand. And I have some friends who might like to play too.

I will start a new page with the two heart poems and do some art to go with it. I will resubmit a link and let you know.