the last rhetorical question

/ joanna

snow in richmond, angled.

where do we dream,
now? i ask, remembering
monday afternoons
that could run through our fingers
like the juice from an overripe

plum. the snow this year
wasn’t as wonder-sunk as the last.
you didn’t dress me up and say
let’s make the most of this.
no, we sat with our backs

to a bar and watched the
flakes fall until they
didn’t. like a disconnect. suddenly
i feel i am stop-gap, filling-
in, badly wrapped

arm-candy. like winter-grass,
pale and limp and persistent.
like the snow that cries, fading.
so i do my dying during
daylight hours, afraid

the neighbors will hear,
call the cops, take
the cat, run. somehow i
am, still; embittered
& embroidered and melting

in what was. you are trim &
full up with prospects & when
you say let’s make the most
of this, it doesn’t sound
the same at all, at all.

28 thoughts on “the last rhetorical question”

  3. This was fantastic. I love how the tone begins as forlorn and wistful, but spirals into desperation as the poem continues. Your use of language is playful, and there is a delightfully surprising turn-of-phrase or image on every line. Just beautiful… and so very sad. Thank you for the fantastic read!

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  4. i find the sadness in the words that once meant one thing no longer having the same feel…and instead of wrapping you up and saying it…standing backs to the bar…the feeling of being the stop gap…the filling in…is no fun either….

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  7. This is great for me because you captured my very short-lived first marriage. Even though I kept trying to rekindle the magic, all my words fell hollow once she decided to default out of the marriage. Here are my favorite moments (from your poem, not my first-marriage) :

    “monday afternoons
    that could run through our fingers
    like the juice from an overripe

    plum.”

    ” we sat with our backs

    to a bar and watched the
    flakes fall until they
    didn’t. like a disconnect.”

    ” like winter-grass,
    pale and limp and persistent.”

    “when
    you say let’s make the most
    of this, it doesn’t sound
    the same at all, at all.”

    OK, so I cited most of the poem – does that tell you how much I loved this? Please please please if this is autobiographical, get out your scalpel, take a big swig of something strong, and cut that tumor out, once and for all! As much I love your pained, tortured love poetry, I want you to start writing about a new place in your world, where passion, connection and the gaze of adoring eyes have surprised the hell out of you. – Mosk

    ps – of course plums drip, but only the sweetest and most ripe.

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  8. This is fantastic! And deeply sad. These lines caught in my throat,

    “suddenly
    i feel i am stop-gap, filling-
    in, badly wrapped

    arm-candy.”

    A brilliant, tragic, and to use Ray’s words, “gut-punch” image.

    Reply

  9. I’m not usually a fan of this style of free form poetry, but once I had started I decided I had to read to the end, give it a chance. I’m glad I did. I love the ending. Peace, Linda

    Reply

  12. So it is asked in the winter season, the season knows despair.

    Perhaps you would have been pleased had you not had this to write about, the irony . . . it is so well written, poignantly expressed.

    I pray you soon know the summer and we know your expressions, the heart notes spring of it.

    Cheers!

    Reply

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Thoughts?