| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
LOVE AND THICK METAPHORS
Kathryn Koromilas
(MiPo Zines)
with a nod to Gerard Manley Hopkins
i.
if i pull a thick
metaphor
out of a thin
hat, will you bring your ruler?
ii.
measure this:
i slide down the curve of your spine and whisper Silk Smooth Paper
(thickness of metaphor, 385 gsm)
i tap the skin there, press keyboard-button bones
(size of metaphor, Lucida Sans 14 pt, Bold)
and make the word dapple
--i’m about to express how your skin is the sun peeking through the trees as
seen fragmented on bare geography--
iii.
someone said it’s all about contraction; making a smaller simile. For
example:
the long version:
Wait, wait for me, will you? Adventure tells me I have to go. I’ll be back.
Stay. Like An Obedient Pet. Stay. And if you close your heart to all the
others, I’ll come back Like A Treat, Like A Fat Chicken Biscuit.
the short version:
Be my Penelope.
iv.
Aristotle didn’t speak of thick or thin, just metafora--
giving you a name
taken from someone else--
You are my Ted
(as in Hughes, Poet-Man-God; height of metaphor, over 6ft tall),
my Sweet
thing (as in John or chocolate, weight of metaphor, 90 kilos or 250 grams,
respectively).
Diomedes didn’t speak of size, either; but of shifting
meaning from proper to improper, for the sake of:
a. beauty (your dappled sunlight smile warms my brow)
b. necessity (i frame you, my dappled-red Picasso, in the tortured gallery
of my mind)
c. polish (your whisper, dappled promise of early afternoon in the park)
and d. emphasis (the dapple-drawn puzzle of your heart)
v.
sometimes i’ll speak metaphors you won’t notice, so familiar
by now (you’re my Araki bud; my red
my red my red my red my red
rose; will love ever
bloom in the desert of your heart?),
they must have been vivid
once but they’ve shriveled;
melted fat into thin common bones.
Death does that.
vi.
watch me pull a thick metaphor
out of a thin hat, call me poet
and love me for it.
Judge Mark Yakich’s comment: “This is one of those metapoem poems that works pretty well until the last section (vi.) which isn’t necessary -- strangely enough it’s better to end on ‘Death does that’ rather than the ‘I’m a poet and I know it’ line. In fact, I think the last line might read better ‘Life does that’ since, as it were, the thrust of the poem is about how metaphors reiterated too many times become worn-out, glassy-eyed things. All that said, I like the ‘Fat Chicken biscuit’ and the ‘Lucida Sans,’ though I’m sure some readers won’t.”
About the InterBoard Poetry Competition
Archive of IBPC Winners
2nd Place Winner, April 2003
