You left nothing, only the Stevens book
I read, There is not nothing, no, no never…
Nothing and a yellow bicycle:
Two tires on a rickety frame.
When I do pick up a poem,
It’s to hear the gravel cadence of you,
Softer, informed by everything that spins:
A world, a bicycle, a chestnut tumbling
Downhill the city’s painted a roadside path,
My collarbone’s begun to mend.
The house gets drafty late afternoons
So I learn to cook:
Turmeric, cayenne. Hing & coriander.
cardamom. Cumin & mustard seeds.
Hing’s a pungent flower called asafetida
And coriander’s just cilantro.
Icy fingers spindle wheels on window panes.
I leave the teakettle to boil.
Spokes of trees shiver in the silverish dusk
Taking lessons from everything bare,
I let in the cold to hear
No stones turned in the drive.
Comments
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Sounds like a sad loss..and I'm sorry for that, but you learned to cook a curry..that has to be a bonus.
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Some great imagery here,the couplets work perfectly for this poem which is about a person stuck in a predictable,dull relationship.
The best couplet(IMHO)is the fifth,the seventh doesnt seem to work for me. A couple of typos,recongise/recognise and bicylcle/bicycle.
Overall I thoroughly enjoyed reading it,super work
See you later
Rhetorica
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I like it
Great word pictures! (I think you have a typo in the 5th stanza. I assume "dafty" probably means "drafty") Anyway, I could see and hear it all, especially the bicycle turning into the gravel drive at the end. (If that's what you meant. If not, that's what I heard anyway. LOL) So you used images and sound both, and very effectively. Actually, taste, smell and touch, also. I could feel that broken collarbone and the cold, and taste and smell the spices. Great job!
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Great piece
I love the brief descriptive methods you use. You certainly have a distinct style. Good job!
language: 5, rhythm: 3, subject: 5, tone: 4, form: 4.
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I think this is deep ,beautiful and well written.Sorry for not being able to say much.
~Feb~
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Exceptional
Hey Chicago. This is great. It has fantastic gravitas, so much so I sense a death more than just a lost love and even if it IS the latter then that's a good job. I love the way the couplets prolong the 'binary' conceit you kick off with and how you use highly specific images to deliver such a vague but powerful sense of suggested loss.
My few reservations were these. 'Sputtering' machine suggests an engine and I think I'd prefer the bicycle image to be kept cleanly intact, it's so gentle, and I prefer the idea of listening for bicycle wheels in the last stanza than the possible (mis)interpretation of a car crunching a gravel drive.
Stanza seven is just unneccessary information and it's tone is informational. It breaks the spell. I'd drop it.
I'd love the last line to be 'bicycle wheels on the gravel' to close the conceit.
Just my (very strong) thoughts. Great write. >W<
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