Robert
Fitterman asks us to collect people’s language of the body. I think
immediately of pain.
I
know you/have staggered wept spiraled through a long room/banging your head
against it holding crushed/bird skulls in your hands your many hearts unstrung
--Kim
Addonizio
After
great pain, a formal feeling comes
This
is when I feel the pleasure.
The
Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –
It
bubbles up from the bottom of my torso
The
stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’
and
zips through my tense flesh
And
‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?
a
full-body buzz that thumps behind my burning skin.
The
Feet, mechanical, go round –
My
headache feels like two people
A
Wooden way
are
pressing really hard
Of
Ground, or Air, or Ought –
on
two different cookie cutters,
Regardless
grown,
fighting
for the same piece of dough.
A
Quartz contentment, like a stone –
The
pain feels like burning, pins and needles,
This
is the Hour of Lead –
and
electric shock.
Remembered,
if outlived,
Toilet
head...my head feels
As
Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –
like
it is a toilet...filled with sewage.
My
body, poisoned...sick and poisoned...chemically toxic.
First
– Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –
SOURCES
Kim
Addonizio, Here, Poem-a-day,
April 11, 2016 in Poets.org; Emily Dickinson, After great pain, a formal
feeling comes; Robbie Arnot, Blood in
Leather, the
Lifted Brow; Bald girl with headaches, the daily
headache; 34-year-old male; T4; injured 5 years, Spinal Cord Injury Update,
Spring 2009; Volume 18, Number 1 in University of Washington Rehabilitation Medicine,
Northwest
Regional Spinal Cord Injury System; Corinne, The Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
and Fibromyalgia Symptom Description Thread in Health
Rising
NOTES
All
text is from the sources without alteration. I feel for anyone who goes through
pain, especially chronic pain. Collecting these feelings makes me feel guilty.
I weaved Emily Dickinson’s great poem within and began the poem with Kim
Addonizio’s words, also about great loss. Loss, whether through death or the
abandonment of a lover, is painful in the body.
Thank
you to Robert Fitterman for this prompt today.
Play
along!
For those of you who are just joining us, The Found Poetry Review is celebrating National Poetry Month by offering daily experimental writing prompts from writers. I will be responding to them at poetic whim.
For those of you who are just joining us, The Found Poetry Review is celebrating National Poetry Month by offering daily experimental writing prompts from writers. I will be responding to them at poetic whim.
4 comments:
Clever!
This is very cleverly done, Amanda. I really like it a lot.
This is marvelous, powerful, inspiring.
thanks to all of you for reading & for the kind words
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