Hi Sue,
An interesting read, this! The details intruige, I love the way "things" get
mentioned, and Mrs Partin, and "beauty in patches of zinnias"! The date, the
place, get mentioned well in passing comments.
I found the mention of the iron lungs a tad surprising (not that there
shouldn't be surprising things in poems! There should, there should!). Would
a singular iron lung be enough?
You say so much but, it's as if there's too much restraint in mentioning the
harsh bits of life. Wondering if the rosy tinted spectacles of nostalgia
can't be taken off a little more? But not much more! The jarflies - every
summer? (Let's just have one summer! and infer every summer) and "drifting
into dreams of..." but you then mention something gruesomely more akin to a
nightmare!
I'm also wondering if there aren't too many lines in the last stanza...
(snip out the whispering line?). I guess the feel of "Little House On The
Prarie" is to avoided at all costs!
Bob
PS Isn't it Nikki Giovanni that also comes from Knoxville?

>From: Sue Scalf <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Cocooned by Cornfields (wip)
>Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2003 10:52:22 EDT
>
>Cocooned by Cornfields
>
>
>a lack of breezes,
>we wiped sweat, used fans,
>and dined on country ham
>sweet cured and salty,
>fresh tomatoes and corn.
>Biscuits and sorghum.
>
>A square of cotton tied
>to the rickety screen door
>kept flies from the house,
>swarms from chicken pens
>and hog pens.  Grandma's spray can
>pumped the porch to life again
>after the sun went down.
>
>Three blocks from the square,
>Mrs. Partin milked her cow.
>The fading depression and thrift
>were ingrained.  Nothing was wasted.
>Beauty grew in patches of zinnias,
>morning glory vines. Jarflies
>sang goodbye to every fading summer.
>
>Iron lungs were real,
>yet the  world was Dick Tracy,
>the Knoxville News Sentinel,
>and Saturdays when Grandma
>sent her white leghorns
>to a floppy death all over the yard.
>And I, aghast, watched her remove
>gizzards, liver, coils of guts,
>all forgotten at Sunday's table
>awash in gravy, pulley bones,
>greasy fingers.
>
>Summer evenings I turned the pillow
>to sleep cool, listening  to corn
>rustling like pages in an album,
>yellowed and whispering,
>drifting into dreams of blood and white feathers,
>drifting with clouds circling the moon.
>
>Sue Scalf

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