Because I am going back and taking a critical look at my "Falling Bodies" series of poems, I will use a few of them today as examples. "Medusa Envy" uses repetition by stealing sentence fragments and using them in the next line. It also discusses repetition directly.
MEDUSA ENVY
(Rejected by Poetry New Zealand, Fawlt Magazine, & Black Words on White Paper)
part of me wants to be the one
the one they all say is the ideal woman
the one every man says is ideal
with the perfect body not too much hip
and the daring face not too much lip
not too much eyeliner
and the mediocre mind
not too much like my sister
who tells everyone who will listen
about the highway patrolman
who stopped her for going ninety-one
and who was so bowled over by her beauty
that he was yeah
that he was physically incapable
of writing her a ticket
part of me
wants to be
that one
part of me wants to take you away
for the weekend
for a long lazy weekend
and just for a few hours to forget the truth
to take you repeatedly
and with great enthusiasm
repeatedly
and with great enthusiasm
without concern for control
without concern for other
without concern for myself
not to think about self
not to think
not to think
not to think
I think
repeatedly
then I’d slide across the bed
like a liquid dream with no firm place to go
I would glide across that comfortable room
open the window
and see if anyone else understands
WITHOUT STEPPING ON IT DIRECTLY
(Rejected by Poems-For-All, Iota, Skidrow Penthouse, Umbrella, & Neon; Published in Haggard and Halloo, Autumn Sky Poetry, Litmocracy & Houseboat; )
I remember developing breasts,
(it was the same year the Russians launched Sputnik)
and going with my aunt to buy my first fully-trained bra,
and learning from the lady at Tots-to-Teens
how important it would be someday
to bend over at the waist when I put it on
and the first time I bent over.
I remember learning that there were men in the world
who wanted to teach me about the men in the world,
and how the faint strong smell of bleach
tinted my sheets last week after I washed the colors
with the whites and left them on the line to dry
bleeding happily all together.
I don’t remember learning I would die,
but it must have been like stepping casually
into a freshly laundered dream,
like stepping into a white tulip skirt
trimmed round the hem
with crimson quatrefoils and tears.
I wonder if I cried,
and when the flowers will start to bleed.
(Rejected by The Delinquent, and others too numerous to document; Published by Clockwise Cat)
Pointing northwest and northeast, all new timepiece hands are set at ten past ten. (An intentionally supplicating posture based on market research, subliminal message, and the appealing gesture of the raised hands.) In a life filled with such trivial manipulation, some days I am tempted to identify, classify and name all of my demons.
Some days you save me. You push against me as gently as a breeze. As surely as the blood thrum that accompanies a potent brew, you coax from me incantations, bright sounds springing from the same root as birdsong, and through mystical language, I am bound to be set free.
When I was a victim of self-forgery, you compelled me to see I could never have been born under the hands of another. When I lost my feathers, you offered music and opened my ears. If I could have brought forth, one by one, all the fish in the sea, I would not have found the magic salmon on my own.
In small tribute, I lift my hands--I touch your mouth--for to dive into such honey, is to be born into sweetness, pure sunlight again & again.
I KNOW
I know the moon is troubling;
its pale eloquence is always such a meddling,
intrusive lie. I know the pearl sheen of the sheets
remains the screen I'll draw against the night;
I know all of those silences invented for me approximate
those real silences I cannot lose to daylight...
I know the orchid smell of your skin
The way I know the blackened path to the marina,
when gathering clouds obscure the summer moon--
just as I know the chambered heart where I begin.
I know too the lacquered jewel box, its obsidian patina;
the sexual trumpeting of the diving, sweeping loons...
I know the slow combinations of the night, & the glow
of fireflies, deepening the shadows of all I do not know.
"Isn't life a series of images that change as they repeat themselves?"-- Andy Warhol