sonnet agley (20160825)

Posted on by crow

i don’t want to know how things are going
not with you–not with your resurrected life
i have little interest in knowing
if you’ve given your hair up to the knife

i can’t scrape up the enthusiasm
to hear you talk about your latest trip
once i thought it was because the chasm
widens–a bridge of shoddy workmanship

but really all i can hear is white noise
i feel a constant pressure on my skin
‘neath water where leviathan enjoys
the dark saline fluidity of sin

sunk deeper than any of neptune’s pools
my leather heart blossoms in bleached spicules

Published by crow

I'm a writer and a dabbler. I live in Washington.

18 thoughts on “sonnet agley (20160825)”

  3. Doesn’t seem too awry to me. A sonnet is a challenge, being so structured. I read it couple of times and I felt distance you created between the subject and narrator. Really well done.

    1. Well, thank you. Strictly speaking, I know the meter is all over the place, but at least I got the rhyme to work!

      1. Yes, the rhyme really works well. It is graceful. Some rhyme is too forced. I like your unusual word choices. You just don’t hear some of those often. (I meant to comment on that earlier). I left out the word- the- when commenting above. The distance you created was palpable. It really worked.

      2. I thank you again for your kind words. I think I try a sonnet maybe twice a year. Here’s to six months from now.

  4. Love this. It drips with droll bitterness but also pain and self defense. Yep, I can relate, thus part of the draw, and my heart too could use the protection of leather and spicules – maybe all hearts could, though your (the you in the poem) heart may be leathered from weather and wear, and I suppose we all get there. In any case, this is such a fine poem/sonnet: the choice language and imagery, and the lingering feelings (“I feel a constant pressure on my skin”), all. ~ Peri

    1. Thank you so much for this. It’s very thoughtful and kind of you to say. To be honest, I wasn’t too sure about it. Formal poems tend to sap my confidence, the more structured the more I lose my footing. So it’s very nice to hear this.

      1. You’re welcome. I’ll definitely have to read back into your archives, if this is your loose footing! (I liked the title too and thought: relationship gone agley – awry, perhaps despite …plans, and also I chuckled to myself that alluding to “to a mouse”could be a further dig to this person who so rankled you. Anyway: thanks for the enjoyable poetry. Carry on : )

  7. There’s a lot of strength here. I can hear pain but also someone taking back their life- if I am reading it right. Really good piece, really moving

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