Saturday, August 2, 2008

bound, or I feel like a horny Emily Dickinson

bound feet and bound wrists,
bound to tell a story of lust
carnal birds flying in wet wind

bound to live a story of love
blue rain falling from brown eyes

beyond this place of yard-gnomes and wooden faces
and planters on the porch and blackberry brambles in the backyard

there are pretty meditations of starry places-
a universe where she can fly around the moon
where there are none of her boundaries
(they are hers alone)

invisible as they are, they still exist
like lines drawn between dark and light

like when the noise stops

she is bound to her bedroom,
her pale green walls, and bookshelves
to her soft blue chair,
her paper lamps
her fences
and those words

that do nothing they do nothing
in her head they do nothing-
on the page they do little else
but run around in the circles of o's

because she won't leave the yard
where the blackberries stain her hands
when she could simply open the gate

4 comments:

Nathan said...

Alright Holly, yes, I definitely see the resemblance. I could go on and on about this. The title is a classic. I can see how this and "Kept" are swimming in the same direction. This tension with boundaries that you so perfectly capture here comes up again and again in my own work. There are a lot of themes that we both work with.

Cynthia said...

intriguing and often amazing the
soft cages we fashion for our
mysterious selves, finely conceived
and written.

holly said...

Thanks Nathan and Cynthia for your kind words.

Julie said...

"Where the blackberries stain her hands" is spectacular! You have the coolest titles, too. Excellent poem, Holly.