Nothing Wild
lives here
anymore.
Switchgrass seeds
dry and crack
in the hidden gears
of escalator steps,
as stillborn colts
lie quiet
on buffed white
linoleum floors,
and a razor catches
beneath my chin
dripping
in the fluorescent light
of an airport restroom.
In this poem I tried emulating the sparseness of Mark Strand’s “Keeping Things Whole”. I wanted to experiment with how short bursts of images could compliment each other and develop a theme posed in the first short sentence of the
poem. I also wanted to try and write a poem with the least amount of sentences I could, which turned out to be two. I wanted to push as much out of/into the second sentence as I could by including almost the entire visual and emotional weight of the poem within it. I really admire how much depth and emotion Strand gets into his poem, while maintaining a sparse/minimalist aesthetic. It is my goal to get to the point where brevity/minimalism strengthens my poetry, rather than a limiting its effectiveness.
photo credit: junkman wildlife supply