The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Fri 1/25/2008)

[RetroLounge]

I am not a man; I am dynamite
------Friedrich Nietzsche

Sometimes you are the single source,
the fist with all the flowers. Sometimes
you are the golden bass, a whisper-
revolution in this country of dust
stretching across the pond’s dirty
bowl. Like a razor through silk
bedclothes, your fin breaks through
the tunnel of sky and one vain cloud.
Sometimes the hostage next door, you
are Sunday every day, and at night
a teenager in Auburn, Nebraska,
slamming an aluminum bat
to a goalpost until your head can’t take it
to make something fucking happen.
Sometimes you are the single source,
the fist with all the flowers, a walking
iris, whose promise to die by late
afternoon makes you the word,
too much to bear. A syllable is
a latch, this word a door you shouldn’t
have opened on a room, its very air
unstable with history. In the wrong
hands and right conditions such
a word will detonate, the way Ambrosia
hides murder in its chest; to find
the brute, look for grieving; how
many souls packed themselves in
until Bethlehem beat them into bedlam?
You are the single source, the fist
with all the flowers—the bass, the razor,
the hostage, the boy, the bat, the ignition,
and yet we sleep on in this field of arms
where I am yours and you are mine.

Leigh Anne Couch

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Leigh Anne Couch lives in Tennessee, where she is the managing editor of The Sewanee Review. Her poems appear in Western Humanities Review, Shenandoah, 32 Poems, Alaska Quarterly Review, Blackbird, The Carolina Quarterly, and other journals. She is the author of a chapbook, Green and Helpless (Finishing Line, 2007) and the book, Houses Fly Away, forthcoming from Zone 3 Press

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:hi:

RL

[Tuesday Afternoon]

1. ahhhh

exhaling, thanks.

:hi:

[RetroLounge]

3. Thanks for the coffee...

:hi:

RL

[hisownpetard]

6. I loved reading the poem of yours, recently posted. How about posting some more?

(Is there a smilie of people begging?)

[RetroLounge]

7. Oh, I toss one of mine out there every so often...

It'll be a little while before I do that again...

:hug:

RL

[hisownpetard]

8. Why? Didn't your Mom teach you to share?

[RetroLounge]

11. I like to space them out over months

and just slip them in here or there...

My momma taught me not to be greedy...

RL

[SPKrazy]

2. ...

:cry:

thanks

:hi:

[hisownpetard]

4. Thanks, RL.

[RetroLounge]

5. My Pleasure...

:hi:

RL

[RainDog]

9. here 'tis!

and a fine one it is.

thank you. I feel better now. The lounge is still spinning round. :)

[RetroLounge]

10. lol

glad you found it...

:hi:

RL

[CaliforniaPeggy]

12. My dear Retro...

This is a strange one, yet I like it...

I'm not sure why, though...

Especially this:

...yet we sleep on in this field of arms
where I am yours and you are mine.

Thank you, sweetie...:hug:




Have you gotten a chance to read mine?

[RetroLounge]

13. Not yet...

but I saved them for when I have more time...

:hi:

RL

[CaliforniaPeggy]

14. Thanks!

Whenever you have time...

I appreciate it so much!

:hi: