My gibbet is a fine and private place
where a lady may tarry of a summer afternoon
elevated and untouchable--
an ideal love just out of reach
like fruit for Tantalus, all pointless sweetness.
Allen Ginsberg appears from out of the crowd,
pink as a schoolmarm, fat as a Christmas goose
carrying his harmonium
singing about plutonium,
barefoot as any angel, toking on the Golden Blunt.
He looks up, mistaking me for a caught kite
dangling above the street in my gibbet
making other women's children
point and cry
demanding candy or weather reports.
Someone climbs up and ties tin cans
to the bottom of my gibbet
in an atmosphere of giddy holiday.
I die and begin to stink
pieces falling away like confetti.
Here I sway to this very day, high above
the Emily Dickinson Parkway
a paragon of virtue and demure reserve,
dead as hell
black as a bowling ball
ring still on my finger, an ingenue of the afterlife,
until gentrification when they'll take me down
because gibbets are out, they're upsetting,
like poetry,
like dead dodos
like buskers in the subway, beautiful, buried, irrelevant.
_______
So many dark and intriguing images and messages - and yet there is beauty in there too - I liked the appearance of Ginsberg in her view as well - Jae
ReplyDeleteWOW! Your tales never fail to amaze. I had to look up gibbet and, from there, was pulled right in. I especially love "an ingenue of the afterlife" (!!! brilliant).
ReplyDeleteA tale of the grotesque, not to mention mystery and imagination, worthy of the Master, Edgar Allan, and quite at home on the Dickinson Parkway. I had a smile on my face many times, and had it wiped off equally as many, by the little razors in the succulent apple of this poem. I especially loved "ideal love just out of reach/like fruit for Tantalus, all pointless sweetness..." because it's one of those common sounding similes that unpacks a complex image with wit and sharpness, and of course the rest follows suit, winding up with those two flawless final stanzas. Even after all these years, you never cease to boggle my mind with what you do and the way you do it, Shay.
ReplyDelete"because gibbets are out, they're upsetting,
ReplyDeletelike poetry, " ... okay, i'll admit it, i laughed out loud. SO GOOD, Shay! kudos! xx, ren
There is so much to love in every line. First, the amazing conceit of a gibbet where a girl may care to tarry. That is so wonderfully dark. Then we get Ginsburg, spectator children crying for candy, the tin cans dangling from your feet (which might be one of the darkest but most humorous lines of yours I can recall). Of course, the aforementioned Emily Dickinson highway, have to love that! And the ending, where our poems dangle as warnings to others - our piratical, practice, we are highwaymen of words.
ReplyDeleteOh wow. Embarrassed to admit I had to look up gibbet. Glad I did as early as I did! What a setting! And that last line... it just felt so relevant. Or the whole last stanza really. Just read an article yesterday about homeless people camping near a showground and the local council coming along and bulldozing their tents!
ReplyDeleteLove all the surrealism in this, or is it magical realism, I never know. Especially these lines:
ReplyDelete"I die and begin to stink
pieces falling away like confetti."
"an ingenue of the afterlife"
"because gibbets are out, they're upsetting,
like poetry,
like dead dodos
like buskers in the subway, beautiful, buried, irrelevant."
👌🏼
Only you could write something so haunting and lovely all at once Shay!!! You must dream in poetry my friend!
ReplyDelete