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don't tell me I don't understand
This poem is hopelessly literary, and hopelessly personal, and generally doomed. I wouldn't be posting it if it weren't the other half of an argument.
Sappho knew
what shaking meant.
So did the poet who watched deerlike Chloe jumping at trembling leaves and lizards
flickering through the bramble bushes.
Not me, not thirteen years old, clutching my knees
awake at the end of a line of sleeping bags, shaking.
Once upon a time there was a youth who could not shiver and shake, so he killed the ghost and the giant, and married the princess. Still he could not shiver and shake, and he complained, so she poured silver twisting minnows over him as he slept, and he woke, shivering and laughing.
That's sex, says Bruno Betelheim: he needed to grow up.
Thirteen-and-a-half, and that was the first time
anyone explained to me.
Sappho knew
what shaking meant.
So did the poet who watched deerlike Chloe jumping at trembling leaves and lizards
flickering through the bramble bushes.
Not me, not thirteen years old, clutching my knees
awake at the end of a line of sleeping bags, shaking.
Once upon a time there was a youth who could not shiver and shake, so he killed the ghost and the giant, and married the princess. Still he could not shiver and shake, and he complained, so she poured silver twisting minnows over him as he slept, and he woke, shivering and laughing.
That's sex, says Bruno Betelheim: he needed to grow up.
Thirteen-and-a-half, and that was the first time
anyone explained to me.
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Strongest line: "so she poured silver twisting minnows over him as he slept"
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