Thursday, January 28, 2010

Unseen


These visual prompts from ReadWritePoem continually work me. I don't know how each one is just the right balm for me... usually they look like just the right torture, actually - but when I meet the prompt and allow it to make its presence known... I tend to be grateful for what appears.

This poem was like stitching a quilt together. I gathered memories and words from the past... sought out a poem I wrote when this incident happened - one too painful to remember... and found some journaling from a month or so ago and brewed the pieces together and here you have it.
(Visual Prompt Image from Sepultre
at Flickr)



A Crooked "Handle-with-care"
Sign - Hand painted in
purple, girly-lettering
Hangs across her throat

Unseen


much like the invisible
to some fourth leg of
her chair: if he
had only reached with his
heart laced fingers
instead of the intellect
of a shattered other
He would have felt it

Unseen

There, right there
In the space between
his quoted "bullshit"
declaration and her
imploding eyebrows
and belly, he would have
felt that leg, piercing
through her core and

Unseen

He would have known that
in one single moment the
breath left their love
behind in its scent, not
its form: The Coyote smelled it,
the howl crying it into
the darkness

Unseen

Shadows, alone in mere traces of
shale-shell-locks-of-her-
hair-sewn-into-rosemary-
laced-gift-envelopes
for the now absent fourth
leg of their connection

There was nothing left
to teeter upon

Unseen

17 comments:

  1. Deep and powerful words, dripping with emotion.

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  2. I've felt that. I still don't understand how that sign can go invisible.

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  3. Julie,
    while you leave the specifics mostly out of the poem, it is all too vivid to anyone who has once been a tender young woman. Gorgeous. It is incredible to me how many different things people can come up with when presented with the same image.

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  4. Wonderfully bittersweet, and the last stanza totally brings it home. Nicely done!

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  5. i like the "absent fourth leg" ... it's a great way to say it!

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  6. Very poignant and sad, i really felt the emotions of your words Julie. Terrific!

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  7. Very emotional and powerful. I love the prose here. Great job!

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  8. All the signs unseen -- polemic triggers: hair, Coyote, chair leg -- makes the scene.

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  9. Hi Julie,

    Powerful indeed. I like "his heart laced fingers" and those last lines.

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  10. The emotion here is so vivdly rendered.

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  11. I love these images and the fact that you leave it to the reader to put things together. IN fact the imagery in this piece butting against the word "unseen" is nice effect. The last lines breaking down to that last "unseen" is really nice.

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  12. so much absent...love it....and unseen repeated....wow...so good...and thanks Julie for you comments and reading my poem....take care

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  13. Powerful piece! Enjoyed this one!

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  14. so emotional...after uncurling from my fetal position, completely felt it. Powerful

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  15. There is so much to love about this piece.

    First, your use of "unseen" as a refrain.

    Then, the emotion quality, which your choices of words convey very well.

    Then, how you wove in the chair from the image.

    Last of all, the "handle with care sign" image stuck with me.

    Great job this week.

    -Nicole

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  16. Hi Julie,
    I have just stopped by. Beautiful work! You write elegantly. I look forward to seeing more!

    Ellie

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