I echo Patrick: a powerful poem, Janet.
The 'characters' are two temporary victims/victimizers, probably in the
biologically appropriate 'merge-urge' years [teens to 40s], who've chosen to
buy into the 'sex is just sex' myth, opposite our brains' hardwiring [in
humans, the 'love' drive's located in the same area as the drive for food].
Your choosing 'ugly' [i.e., short, slang] words [e.g., "piss", "sweat",
"lick", "come"] for bio nouns, sets us up for the "non-love"making aftermath
description. Also most effective is the clinical description of her
actions, immediately followed by the most emotional, the penultimate line.
You give us the female's view, and you suggest the male's. She regrets his
not wanting to sleep next to her, to stay until morning [note: "wouldn't"],
and she illogically insists on washing off the incipient child, her motive
up for reasonable debate, and the reaction the strongest one in the poem,
therefore well placed near-last and last.
I keep thinking that deleting the first 2 stanzas, jumping right into her
actions would work well. But that's a minor mention. I also keep bumping
against "the hand" in stanza 6, think "my hand" would sound more natural,
but think "my finger" [in that stanza *or* to replace "skin" in stanza 5],
might better spotlight what we see her do, but, again, minor mentions for
this well wrought poem.
Best,
Judy
On 23 January 2010 07:33, Patrick McManus <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> Janet powerful poem
> Patrick
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Janet Jackson
> Sent: 22 January 2010 16:07
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: poem - 'thin' (warning: content may offend)
>
> This gets a bit yucky. Be warned!
> Comments on poetics are welcome.
>
> *thin*
>
> His piss in the toilet,
> his siren sweat in the air:
> gone, in the light.
>
> In the sink, a glass, his lick
> dried on it
> somewhere.
>
> In the open bin on the tissues and plastic,
> two knotted condoms, 3am, 4am.
> He wouldn't stay till morning, add a third.
> He wouldn't sleep
> beside me.
>
> Naked in my purple bathrobe
> I kneel on the vinyl beside the bin,
> pick out the condoms, hold
> them in my fingers, his come,
> no longer white, now cloudy-clear and thin,
> his sperm dying.
>
> He was so hot.
> From the drawer by the sink
> I get the big scissors and, not knowing
> what will happen, make a small cut
> near the end of one condom. His come rushes
> onto my skin, cool, amniotic,
> albumen-clingy, thin, slightly
> distasteful. I wouldn't lick it,
> now.
>
> The kitchen is chill, silent, scentless.
> I raise the hand, inhale:
> musky, grassy come-smell
> tainted with latex.
> I can't smell *him*, only
> an abstraction.
>
> The life I didn't want
> runs over my hand into the bin.
>
> Before I can do anything
> I have to wash it off me.
>
> A draft by Janet Jackson
> 21 January 2010
>
> --
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