when the earth was flat
and ripe, and riddled with dew
like a newborn child,
the plains just rolled on forever
and savanna turned to tundra
with distance,
only the cold black ocean signifying
the beginning of the edge of the world
in your eyes I found northern Europe,
a muddy ice that split my gaze in two
in your legs, Africa
neat protective muscles that twitch
like a cheetah's, lightly
haired calves luminous
under a savagely red moon.
the two Americas lay side by side
in your heart,
itching with thirst and variation
proclaiming vastness
capable of translating
the scorn and cement of New York
to the feverish heat of Bogotá
but Asia was gathered in
your cupped hands, meekly
offering me tiny
yellow flowers
that came from a sunbeam that pierced
central China
Australia, your hair, smelling of sweat
and sea-salt.
and a million tiny islands scattered
across the length of your back,
archipelagos hidden in your ribcage
Kauai and Oahu wink at each other,
twin landforms,
your kidneys.
~~~
but then the very earth shifted
collapsing mountains, swallowing valleys,
creating lakes and rivers that veined through
the hearts of these broken countries.
and seven lonely continents were born,
each one bitter and isolated
like faraway neighbors that detest a face
they have never seen
~~~
and now we stand here, love,
two brittle continents shaped
from the earth's selfish and nomadic urge
that she then passed on to man
and from then on, the whole world
couldn't stop moving, shifting
and migrating from place to place,
dissatisfied
by every landscape, untouched
by every countryside.
oh, to forge ourselves back together
with crude glues and putties
as if we were a single creature.
you, a jumble of arms and legs
that don't quite fit together.
your palm on my shoulder,
my legs around your waist,
and every desperate gesture
to become one again.
Author notes
Written April 22nd, 2006
In a list
A contest entry
- see not the flame, know the artist, and understand blood. (invite only) by apples fell.
400 points, ended September 25, 2008, 34 entries
Silver trophy winner
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
What did you think
Comments
1 - 17 of 17
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This is..
well, this is beautiful to the point of stealing my words.
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stunning
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This is one of my favorite poems ever. I can't believe it is in a contest that is current.
I'm going to send you a link to another, rather long poem of which I am very fond. Do with it what you will.
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yes. -
Although I think there are some areas where filler words could be trimmed, like one of those "of" words in the last line of the first stanza, this is truly excellent writing. I love your work because it conveys distance, commonality, the places we sometimes don't want to go and how you do this is usually with a very absolute tone. I'm thinking your writing is about the in-betweens, how metaphors and simple imagery can combine to form a greater connection to the reader and to yourself.
"and seven lonely continents were born,
each one bitter and isolated
like faraway neighbors that detest a face
they have never seen"
- I think that hit the closest for me. It's hard to believe we were once all savages and sadly, still are in many ways. The geographical aspect of the poetry found here is deeply effective and somewhat mesmerizing. Your piece leaps down the page, discussing the ins and outs of many of the things most writers simply forget to take notice of. I think this is just good writing, with my filler word critique aside. It's not long for the sake of being long and it's not trying to shock or even amaze the senses...What it does it does well and for that, I found it one hell of locomotive piece.
Thanks for the excellent entry and good luck.
;
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beautiful.
your poetry writes the best images for my mind to interpret. -
Exceptional
A rather incredibly wonderful, well and deftly turned piece of poetry--brilliant. Excellent, if not extraordinary.(My own humble poem regarding Pangea allpoetry.com/Poem/1960994 ) -
I'm following Zayra, Lisa sent me here to read 'l'enfant terrible.'
I'm happy I came.
I've read this one scanned another and plan, time permitting, to return often.
I'm sure by now you've heard all about how accomplished you are at such an age. Hell you're accomplished at any age.
Looking at the lineupabove it looks like the best and brightest of AP are in your choir.
This poem goes from the cosmic to the microcosmic with the grace and pace of an antelope, It shows a mind capable of thinking around corners and an imagination that's worthy of envy.
I like it
and besides were both from Connecticut. -
I was recommended to come and read your work, which is beautiful, deep and thoughtful. I will be reading more of your work. Thank you for sharing it.
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hannah,
this isn't even my favorite poem by you. what i just said is a clarifier for what I am going to say. Different phrases of compliment have differnt meanings than other phrases of complement. So, this doesn't personally gouge me as deeply as the most gouging poems ever, or rip my brain away with the startling originality and nakedness of some other ones, but what it does have
is a breadth and epicness and astonishing grandness of metaphor - how that one metaphor spans such a tremendous range of feelings and moments and even a full plot cycle and is at times exceptionally descriptive and at times (the end) exceptionally personal, all living within that single structure -
all of this makes me feel that it is a poem of greatness, in that classica sense of the word, of the best poems by the commonly-held best authors of the modern era, where we were supposed to feel awe and a sense of wonder/beauty, even during descriptions of things that were sad - and sometimes we didn't, but sometimes we did, once in a while, get that feeling we're supposed to get, even me.
This poem is like that. It's like stumbling on an Egyptian pyramid that someone built by themselves behind their house with no publicity of any kind. It is, in short, a phoenomenal poem, the sort you could probably submit to the New Yorker.
I am 100% dead serious. Your talent has no ceiling. If I've ever met/encountered any one person in my life whose poems deserve to be on a wider stage, and who it seems to me could stand a damn chance, it would be you.
Half of me immediately wants to say: now please don't do something stupid like believe me and actually try and go out and do that, because the world is stupid and arbitrary and I wouldn't want you to be hurt -
having said that, I'd buy it. -
Absolutely gorgeous. I get a sad but hopeful vibe from it. Also a cry against prejudice and war. Stunning and emotional.
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Brilliant
May I say I like 'savage' better than 'savagely' there. I do. By now you know of my love for your writing. Ditto to all that has gone before, and all the things I have said before. -
This reinstilled in me a love for your way with words. You are incredible here. Remarkable.
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Oooh it's those desparate gestures to become one again that really get to me. I haven't read you in a while. Used to be Simon Moon. Anyway.. really good... hmhmhmmh.... I like the rapture your words bring, crazy.
Just so you know, your concepts have marked me eternally. ^_^ -
you, a jumble of arms and legs
that don't quite fit together.
your palm on my shoulder,
my legs around your waist,
and every desperate gesture
to become one again.
God, I'm so depressed now. lol And just when I was enjoying that stingin' Nevada sun...but in this, I found such incredible moments of pure poetry...almost made up for the grapefruit scratches these snub-nosed bullet words left behind. Once more, you set your pen to stunning, and your talent grows ever more evident...as does my envy...
Bravo.
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amazing
i'm living on Gaia's kidney. lol.
this poem is SPECTACULAR. this whole relaxed but mournful call for oneness/globalization/ the eradication of the isolationism of the modern world. it's strange how now that we've got telephones & the internet and all kinds of things, we've still got that archaic sense of nationalism & isolationism. but that's what you get with religious people, the religions having been thought up millenna ago.
we need a Second Coming, to 'modernize' Christianity. or something.
but this poem is so eloquent, so calm, so deep & powerful very much like the voice of the earth, or one engaged in the kind of dialogue one would have to have with the earth. that last stanza is so tragic. have you like myself given up hope? -
wow multi-textured inan exotic tapestry of words, sumptuous images sliding on a breeze on some kind of Magic carpet feel. it reminded me of Italian Futurism but then not -huh? I dont know - but the poem was very elogently put with sublime erudition!!! Applause!
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