Morgue linens sweep over Perdita’s eyes.
Rosemary and rue bleed through the threads.
Gauze scuds dab and staunch between her splayed knees.
Flora, sheering queen, breaches sun’s miscarriage.
The pale shifting wisps of ice crystal ghosts
slither over her outstretched corpse, coldly
fondle every pore, crease, and crevice,
leave blue mirrors where puddles once lay.
The purple martin house remembers song.
Undine appears in the frozen bird bath.
,noitcelfer detsorf yreve stnuah ecaf reH
disrupts Dis, inverts Perdita’s new myth.
I must take black drapes to spread and set forth
to cover every mirror in the earth.
A contest entry
- snowflakes and icicles and numb little hands by Annalise.
2000 points, ended December 26, 2007, 13 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Please tell me what you think
Comments
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"ice crystal ghosts
slither over her outstretched corpse, coldly
fondle every pore, crease, and crevice,"
wow. what an image. "coldly / fondle" is especially captivating. paradoxical, even though not exactly opposite, but incongruent, rebels against our instinctive assumptions, yet its still possible. "slithers" is an extremely effective verb, with quite an impact.
i like the inverted line as well. shame the letters and punctuation can't be inverted as well. beautiful line, and clever.
beyond that, this poem is beyond me, and i'm too lazy to try to figure out what you're talking about, who "Perdita,""Flor," and "Dis" are. but wanted to point out some of the wonderful lines and images in this, which struck me even without knowing the larger context or meaning. -
"breaches sun's miscarriage" -- could there possibly be any more poetry in that phrase? I'm particularly jealous of that phrase. Genius.
The inverted line is also something I'm jealous of.
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the comma beginning the inverted line is funny
the slithering frost-ghost fog is perfectly frightful and cold, reminds me a bit of my Fog Dancing poem of several years ago. there's life in that death, somewhere, but it won't last.
the shine of reflective surfaces poignantly captures what it is to hold on to a premorbid state, the covering of these in black equally capturing the closure of acceptance.
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