Thursday, April 7, 2011

Poem #7

"What She Cannot Say"

1.
sista-girl look here
hair nappy in the kitchen
you are not angry
I always assume you are
black skin is nothing but---

2.
                                                           white teeth, picket fence
                                             I want to open your mouth
                                             climb in, look around
                                             wave my flashlight beam on words
                                             buried under PC's cover

3.
no one wants to talk
about this word that lies still
on our tongues' edges
we dance a waltz around it
pretend its fire-breath quenched

what will happen when
we trip on our own feet and
fall into its lap
this word we believe is dead
but no, it's not, sista-girl

*

[This is a tough one. I'm working within the poetic form of tonka --a sister to the Japanese haiku-- which is 5 lines long and follows the syllabic pattern of 5 / 7 / 5 / 7 / 7 but I'm also trying to write about things people don't talk about --how to write about the unsaid? to say the unsaid?-- without being esoteric, though I feel that this draft is just that: a big code for something vague --and I hate that! So I need more time to work on this... time I unfortunately don't have right now. So yeah, I don't like this poem. Not this draft, anyway.]

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