Not a Car

Recently, I mentioned I started setting up my cat chapbook for publication. It is pretty much ready to go but I made the decision to delay its release. Why? Without thinking, I submitted one of my cat poems to a journal. When I started sending poems to journals, I learned quickly that most won’t publish anything that’s already been published—that includes self-publishing in a book or on a blog. So I’ve decided to delay my cat chapbook until I hear from the journal, which could take a few months.

No matter. I’ve got lots to keep me occupied besides waiting. I am slowly compiling my fourth full book of poems, The Anonymity of Waiting, and I’m chipping away at a series of poems based on Psalms.

Poems are known for being indirect, oblique…even obscure. They communicate through images and abstractions more than direct statement. As a person, I am more of a direct communicator so I have to go against my own grain when writing poems.

The poem below (from my third book, Shadow and Memory) describes something through contrast—by presenting images of what it isn’t and what it is. I would love it if readers would share what these images evoke for them. As a writer, it’s always instructive to compare what I intend to say with what readers hear. If you’d like to guess, leave a comment below!

Not a car
screaming through clenched brakes,
weeping glass,
and crumpling alone
beneath a tree

but the sweet flesh of fruit
unpicked, and lost
to the ground.

Not an opera house
shaken by 
suicide’s aria

but a grizzled head
wadded up
in a stained blanket
on the street.

Not a swan 
spreading enchanting wings,
its spell of flight
shattered by the spray
of blood and birdshot

but a gray pond,
listless
in the piercing rain.