Monday, October 9, 2017

Rewrite of Bordeaux poem

Rampage

The glass tapers so the wine avoids the tongue
and worms down the throat into the brain’s meaty pit.
In the browning edge the waitress says something I miss.
The glass breaks like an egg. A few drops bleed
into the table’s grain. Disappear. I hold the glass still
aloft so she could see. A peony slumped on the asphalt
defeated by the morning dew. A crumpled bird that smacked
a window. Is wine contained like yoke in a broken belly?
My palm is wet. Red drains down my wrist, pastes jeans
to my leg. Dig out the shard. Make blood run like wine.

Link to previous version. I tried to fix some problems. 1. Old title did very very little--making sure the reader knew the wine was red and that the glass was more tapered than, say, a burgundy glass. 2. "More glasses would survive" was trite, and symptomatic of the shock I was in (Jack) at the time. It undercut the point of the poem which was my prayer for rage.

No comments: