Monday, November 17, 2008

Counterpart

When I watch you choose your face in the morning.
When you hold the silk voice to your unshaven cheek.
Muffle questions with the scarf of your full throat.
I want to bite your tiny glass fingers,
snag the fibres of your lungs
in my clenched cat teeth
with indifference.

It stays like this,
holds to the refrain.
Strains to open and wriggle free
then leans back into itself.
A perfect disciple.

This is how we queue to touch you.
In the middle of your chest
dousing for certainties-
through the ribs,
through the pink flesh,
through the mouth.

12 comments:

Miss Jane said...

I'm fascinated by this strange song and the feline or the feeling that clings and pokes.

Anonymous said...

Excellent

Stu said...

I too am fascinated.

JASON MASHAK said...

Fine work, Amanda. The shape of it, feminine itself, so naturally follows the breath of the lines. This came from the heart as much as the head (rare these days).

tania lamond said...

words fail me...

yes... a very fine write. its is so precise.

bruce dorlova said...

i do Love this.

Denis Joe said...

What a brilliant opening line and a great title. That you infer the musicality of this poem (and poetry in general) shows a great deal of self-assuredness. And such confidence is borne out in this.

There is quite a lot going on in this narrative. On the technical level the vowel sounds play off against each other well. The hard sounds and soft sounds seem arbitrary at first but connecting them with the actual descriptions within the narrative and the reader finds a pattern.

What is great here is the move from the (almost) voyeurism of the first stanza to the religiousness of the last. ‘This is how we queue to touch you’ suggests a Christ figure. One is left to wonder who the sufferer in this is.

Such a beautifully written poem.

Anonymous said...

You have many beautiful poems here and they are beautifully presented as well. They have a unique voice with a real edge and show a lot of careful craft in their making.

Amanda Joy said...

Thank you Paul, nice to see you in here..

A.Joy

Chris Russell said...

This poem, I'm sure you know, delivers a lot of energy, is a wonderfully permissive slaughter with "tiny glass fingers," demonstrating "through the mouth" in the "morning" that is "in the middle of your chest," the muscularity of how a poem can convey itself as a body that longs to "lean back into itself. A perfect disciple." Thank you for creating this "face" through which I am able to more completely become familiar with my own.



Chris

Joy Leftow said...

feeling the imagery

M. A. S. said...

I've read a lot of your more recent poems, and I love the way you use parts of the human (or fish) body parts as descriptors. It's a specific tool you for you that is well used to craft your sensual and vivid images.