Dear Amy, This is one of those poems that I've been trying to write for days/months/years and don't feel as if I'll ever really be able to finish. I made a lot of headway tonight, though. Please tell me what you think.
Cicadas
Everything always seems to necessarily
Return to cicadas in my life,
Even now, even tonight,
I cannot remember silence or calm.
Even left to the cold recesses of my mind,
I am consumed by chirping.
What is it to be consumed?
A body left desirous?
A trembling lung?
An innocuous cough?
Consumption, consumption.
There is an ache that rests low,
Low in the soul but in the chest,
Ice hot and swelling,
A rough boulder in a dry throat,
Do people die from this?
I feel as if I might die,
Tonight, again,
Because again, tonight
I have to hear the tremble
In my mother's voice.
And tonight, again,
I must retreat into a solemn nest.
I must content myself with cicadas,
Not knowing any other way,
Not sure what two hands
Or two hearts,
Or four,
Mean anymore.
How many years have I listened to cicadas,
The soundtrack to my life,
Amongst a slurry mix of weeping?
An echo from corner to corner,
From room to room,
Inescapable.
How many more years will cicadas come?
Justine Bienkowski
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Justine, I really like this poem. I think when you spend a lot of time and energy on a piece, it really shows.
ReplyDeleteThe first stanza is meditative--it gives voice to the speaker's wondering, and outlines a question that continues to be asked through the rest of the poem. This is a nice prelude/introduction to the poem, but I wonder whether, as this poem is revised, you might be able to take it out altogether. I usually find that when I write something really expansive and difficult like this, it's easy to begin with a seed question that I then structure the poem around...sometimes leaving that seed in the final version makes it too easy for the reader, though. I think the wondering exists throughout the poem...to voice it so explicitly at the onset eliminates the need for the reader to find their way through the poem and figure out what the basic wondering is.
I think the onomatopoeia of "Consumption, consumption" is brilliant...you consistently do really cool things with sounds in your writing.
I think "A rough boulder in a dry throat," is a great description. It makes my throat really uncomfortable.
I love the twining of: "I feel as if I might die, / Tonight, again, / Because again, tonight".
I'm not quite sure what the "four hearts" references in the 5th stanza.
I think the last stanza is sort of a return to the beginning. I really like the way the questions are posed here...it sort of restates the first stanza, but with greater subtlety, partially because the speaker is questioning and not stating.
I feel like another metaphor could replace "The soundtrack to my life". I don't know if "slurry mix" was intended to refer back to "soundtrack", but I definitely thought of a mixed tape/CD which distracted me because that language is so unlike the rest of the poem that it pulled me out of the moment.
I do like that this poem ends with this question. I think the entire poem leads, in gradual layers, to that question. I wouldn't be surprised if this became a very long poem...I'd certainly like it to be, as I think it requires a lot of of searching and probing to get to the end.
Lastly, I also like the notion of cicadas as organisms that shed their exoskeletons. I think there is a type of transformation that takes place in the poem that mimics this. I think the idea of transformation and molting--or trying to molt--is very much already a part of this poem and is in the DNA of the poem at any rate.
I added to it...
ReplyDeleteCicadas
Everything always returns to cicadas,
Even now, even tonight,
I cannot remember silence.
Even left to the cold recesses of my mind,
I am consumed by chirping.
What is it to be consumed?
A body left desirous?
A trembling lung?
An innocuous cough?
Consumption, consumption.
What is this cicada to me?
Is it my arm or my face?
Can I shed this skin to fly off?
There is a raw ache that rests low,
Low in the soul but in the chest,
Raw like the scraping of skin,
Ice hot and swelling,
A rough boulder in a dry throat:
Do people die from this?
I feel as if I might die,
Tonight, again,
Because again, tonight
I have to hear the tremble
In my mother's voice
As she says, "yes, again, again,"
And tonight, again,
I must retreat into some other world,
Some place far from the jailhouse phone calls,
Some place away from birdcage prisons,
Some place away from the tremors.
I must content myself with cicadas,
I must vibrate alongside them,
Not knowing any other way,
Not sure what two hands
Or two hearts,
Or family,
Mean anymore.
How many years have I listened to cicadas?
An echo from corner to corner,
From room to room,
Being unable to escape shadows and skeletons.
How many more years will cicadas come?
The phone lies dead,
A thing not of flesh,
Beating out the tones of my mother's calls.
Beating out a truth universally ignored and unspoken.
And so it seems I did not know
The days and nights my sister must have spent
In birdcages or under dirty bridges,
Because I simply "did not ask."
I think I'll ask, finally,
For cicadas to leave me,
But then what will be left but an ugly silence
And ugly, ugly bugs crawling over arms,
Beating, beating wings that do not lift.
I really like this revision of the poem. I think the additions definitely fleshes out the previous draft much more fully. I also think the changes you made to the stanzas that were in the previous draft are very good and makes the poem a lot tighter and cleaner. I'd like to see still more more versions of this. I think the revision process is exhausting work, and reminds me of Michelangelo chiseling out the David...eventually, though, you get close to showing what was in the stone all along.
ReplyDelete