4.21.2006

How I Feel Today

A poem by A.E.Stallings

Fragment

The glass does not break because it is glass,
Said the philosopher. The glass could stay
Unbroken forever, shoved back in a dark closet,
Slowly weeping itself, a colorless liquid.
The glass breaks because somebody drops it
From a height — a grip stunned open by bad news
Or laughter. A giddy sweep of grand gesture
Or fluttering nerves might knock it off the table —
Or perhaps wine emptied from it, into the blood,
Has numbed the fingers. It breaks because it falls
Into the arms of the earth — that grave attraction.
It breaks because it meets the floor's surface,
Which is solid and does not give. It breaks because
It is dropped, and falls hard, because it hits
Bottom, and because nobody catches it.

8 comments:

minus five said...

welcome.
to rock bottom.
#23827.

how's the view?

Rupert said...

nice . . . thanks for posting it - I remember Alicia as just a timid little gurl-poet around town - her reading at Tech was excellent - also - you, Miss Tania, should be feeling quite well today after the airing of your show on WABE last night - your comments and your readings were both super . . . I liked the laugh-lines by the audience during Margaritas . . . congrats

Mary Campbell said...

Keep your chin up, Tania!
Hey, at least it's Friday....
:)

Tania Rochelle said...

Thanks everyone.

aud said...

I know how frustrated you must be. Hope it gets better and enjoy your weekend :)

Anne Elser said...

Oh my god, it's beautiful. Poems like that make me literally ache. And I think of the fragility of all of is. You doin' OK?

Anonymous said...

Makes me want to be a poet I thought as the galvanized nail ripped the hem of my dress
As shards of the splintered Lilac wood we were using to carve flutes gathered at our feet.

You go first she said pausing
like a sober Tania Rochelle poem
before taking deep breaths
before fluttering in the dark space between us before not answering the desires that too gathered around our feet like the extra dark white cedar mulch
that you can only buy by the cubic yard, before I went back to listening to the baby room monitor for signs of life.

Tania Rochelle said...

So nice to see poetry in response to poetry.

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