A new favorite of mine, and the first poem this week written by a woman. I love the story that it tells, the fact that it reads half as a song and half as advice.
Ontological by Maggie Anderson
This is going to cost you.
If you really want to hear a
country fiddle, you have to listen
hard, high up in its twang and needle.
You can't be running off like this,
all knotted up with yearning,
following some train whistle,
can't hang onto anything that way.
When you're looking for what's lost,
everything's a sign,
but you have to stay right up next to
the drawl and pull of the thing
you thought you wanted, had to
have it, could not live without it.
Honey, you will lose your beauty
and your handsome sweetie, this whine,
this agitation, the one you sent for
with your leather boots and your guitar.
The lonesome snag of barbed wire you have
wrapped around your heart is cash money,
honey, you will have to pay.
Don’t you just love the pictures that this poem brings to your mind? ‘All knotted up with yearning” rings so true; and I love the imagery of ‘the lonesome snag of barbed wire you have wrapped around your heart’.
Another difference of this poem is that it doesn’t read as well out loud as it does on paper. It loses something when I try to speak it and part of that is because it doesn’t have an easy tempo. It’s possible that someone could read it the right way, but personally I get more out of this poem on paper.
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