The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Mon 3/16/2009)

[RetroLounge]

The Nurse's Diagram of the Tracheotomy

          -for Billy Strayhorn

It was the way Sweet Pea sipped cognac
through his throat's clear tube-its thin amber
always catching the light under ray adjustments-and the jazz
I recognized as his playing in the white room.
The diagram's black and white illustration drew
his eyes through horn-rims. The thyroid's blossom
hanging from the trachea's stalk
like a snowed-over crocus, stiff with ice,
its stem rimmed, the stoma a black hole
through his body's weather. That's when he began to mutter,
forgetting the void that had to be sealed
with a fingertip. His breath barely flapped
at his starched collar. All I ever heard was piano
stepping from some distant room like a dress. If I asked
him to repeat, he would point to the poster's stark human
silhouette, to its flower that grew inside,
meaning: Lotus Blossom, Passion Flower, Flower
Is a Lovesome Thing. A flower
will drink anything. My aging neighbor will put out
his last cigarette tonight
in the potted orchid's topsoil-the kitchen light
will shut off suddenly,
and I'll watch his picture window
a minute longer-the flower's pale outline turning
quietly to pitch. I'll wait for the dark that lightning
once sizzled into my den, and what came after,
the grand's slow bank of ivory
glowing for awhile after the lamp went out.

Anna Journey

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ANNA JOURNEY is a Ph.D. candidate in creative writing and literature at the University of Houston. She's won the 2007 Diner Poetry Contest, the 2005 Sycamore Review Wabash Prize for Poetry, a summer writing residency at Yaddo, and has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her poetry appears in FIELD, The Kenyan Review, Shenandoah, the anthology Best New Poets 2006 (Samovar, 2006), and elsewhere. Her book reviews are published in Blackbird, and a critical essay on Sylvia Plath appears in Notes on Contemporary Literature.



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:hi:

RL

[Chorophyll]

1. ...

:hi:

[RetroLounge]

4. ...

:hi:

RL

[blueraven95]

2. ...

:hi:

[RetroLounge]

5. ...

:hi:

RL

[Tuesday Afternoon]

3. ~

:donut: :hi:

odd about the Sylvia Plath essay because this one puts me to mind of Plath.

[RetroLounge]

6. ...

:hi:

RL

[BlueIris]

7. Yowza. nt

[RetroLounge]

8. Yeah...

:hi:

RL

[Xipe Totec]

9. Beautiful n/t

[RetroLounge]

10. Thanks for reading!

:hi:

RL

[Xipe Totec]

11. It was your post that jogged my memory

and inspired me to post this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=105&topic_id=8610640&mesg_id=8610640

:hi:

[DeepBlueC]

12. that's lovely

:hi:

[RetroLounge]

13. Thanks

:hi:

RL