triptych of a little man

Spoiler

I know, it's a monster. It's a personal piece this time.

I.

there’s a man tunneling in my bones
who carves scrimshaw, cracks soul with shovel fingers
and he keeps me still with a finger
on my jaw, waking, aching,
unravelling into a tangle of tissue and
tendons stretching across my body;
terse muscles pop
as I strain away.

he whistles hollow rhythms mother used to sing,
lopsided notes sinking
like an October storm--
exhaling autumn air, he pools reason to cough to my mouth,
between my teeth--and cavities filled with silver etching
melt down into years and names that could never entirely
fit into the ivory hollows of my genealogy.

my ribs fit into a family crest like a wolverine
slathering at the lips--
my insides have dried and curled into
claws of dehydration,
and each breath crumbles them down to dust--
he gnaws at the needle in my vein,
laps at the marrow of silver rabbit bone,
and he nurses.




II.
I taste each sour second, spare
and syllables break between my teeth like glass;
there’s a man peddling ceramic who lives under my tongue,
and he sings blues to my bones,
swallows them down with a slavesong
that’s for no one but himself--
he takes the fragments split by a
minute, an hour, into wicker hands
woven between the points of my canines
and incisors, a nervous swallow and panicked lungs.

hollow gums hum jazz like the muffle of a record player,
too scratched and dusty, too drowned in gin to remember the tune
but it is a lullaby of sorts, a kiss on the line of a jaw,
a reminder of how to breathe with
flat notes press wide plateau palms
onto my sternum, pulling, pressing, pulling
so that I can inhale the whole world,
all the sour seconds that drink religion
and stumble with tabernacle-suicidal inebriation--
my mouth is full of gritty sand,
but, but I can smell postmodernism on my breath.

he sits silent, smiles at my ignorance--
his wicker hands are steady as he segments all the
little bits of something I think they call a soul;
I can hear it cracking as my teeth crack--
someone is cutting wrinkles in my face,
tools as sharp as his teeth when he stops his slavesong, smiles.

I would say that it was him, that his wicker hands
hold blades of broken mortar molars, but
there is still a buzz of blues rumbling down to my navel;
there is still a voice leaking through the dark corners of my mouth,
one that is not mine,
one that does not speak language or words
or anything one might say.
I know now--he knows now--
he spits me out to sell me to something I do not know
and yet, he is not a wealthy man;
he has only songs and spare, sour teeth,
spare, sour seconds,
a small home under the bridge of my mouth.




III.
I find him in my drinking glass.

he is a birdsnest of awkward limbs
torn into two fragmented men like
a giant of myth
rosey-cheeked blood-toothed giant
that holds me in the hollow of his palm
as nothing but an empty skeleton,
collected and counted bones.

he drilled holes in my knees, my elbows,
my clavilces and skull like he was making some instrument
for the wind to blow through,
an October storm just like the ones
he used to whistle with his lips pressed
and he sets me on a birdhouse perch
where dystrophy locks my knees and in a twist
of languid muscles a song plays its way through my body--

but gone are the blues; his pointed teeth
are copper cold and his hands are large branches,
spurning roots because when they plunge into the earth
it shakes like it were the tree and he were the wind.
but my bones shake too-- they shake and they break
when he wants them to, which he almost always does.

he still nurses from me,
but it has been a long time since he has nursed from
my breast or a rabbit bone--
he pulls a vein to his lips and he drinks me sore,
he drinks me dry until he cannot walk,
drunkenness sprawled in his footsteps and the swing
of steadying-not-so-steady arms.
he does not know how ashen my insides are, what draught
time has poured down my throat,
how the burns have patterned me empty.

It wasn't easy to read it. It was long and dragged on, but very good. When I finally got up the courage to finish it instead of debating on whether or not to quit reading, I actually enjoyed it. Good Job! Keep Writing!

Hi Perse,

I didn't get into this yesterday because chemistry folded into dinner and dinner folded into history and folded into general brainlessness. So, now I'm here! You scared all the reviewers away unfortunately, but I'll brave through this for you.

As I've told you, I'm very glad you wrote this and broke it down for me. So I'll focus on the finer details of this.

there’s a man tunneling in my bones
who carves scrimshaw, cracks soul with shovel fingers
and he keeps me still with a finger
on my jaw, waking, aching,
unravelling into a tangle of tissue and
tendons stretching across my body;
terse muscles pop
as I strain away.

I feel that the image of scrimshaw isn't strong enough to stand within the poem, it's a wonderful and descriptive word, but at the same time, makes me thinks of sperm whales and balene. It works in context of the introduction of teeth later in the stanza, but I feel that the actual purpose of this word is solely superficial, and in the end it's a thread of the poem that's sticking out. It's not an image enough to carry over through the rest of the poem and since it's right at the beginning takes our attention away from what you're telling us. I first interpreted this part of the 3 as the description of a hereditary disease, which instead all to far off, but if you want to strengthen your words, you have to be super precise in the purpose of this image. Don't have me off and dreaming about whales.

he whistles hollow rhythms mother used to sing,
lopsided notes sinking
like an October storm--
exhaling autumn air, he pools reason to cough to my mouth,
between my teeth--and cavities filled with silver etching
melt down into years and names that could never entirely
fit into the ivory hollows of my genealogy.

you have your point 1 - whistling then point 2 - pooling of reason. These being bridged by the october storm. However the build up to and from that transition isn't quite strong enough, it leaves us wondering how we got from whistling to a mouth and genealogy. You aren't carrying your reader over enough.

my ribs fit into a family crest like a wolverine
slathering at the lips--
my insides have dried and curled into
claws of dehydration,
and each breath crumbles them down to dust--
he gnaws at the needle in my vein,
laps at the marrow of silver rabbit bone,
and he nurses.

I'm glad you got rid of those two lines I thought sounded pretty bad in context of the poem. Watch the cuts though, your enjambment is slightly strained at times though it's improving. Keep it as natural as possible, the only excuse you could give me for strained enjambment would be during the part about things in your mouth. For dramatic effect in certain instances it works, otherwise pay attention to it, you're splitting my tongue when you don't ( :c)

I taste each sour second, spare
and syllables break between my teeth like glass;
there’s a man peddling ceramic who lives under my tongue,
and he sings blues to my bones,
swallows them down with a slavesong
that’s for no one but himself--
he takes the fragments split by a
minute, an hour, into wicker hands
woven between the points of my canines
and incisors, a nervous swallow and panicked lungs.

Alright, here you start to lose a little clarity in thought process. You have the build over with taste, and then in goes into texture before going into sound in the form of blues/jazz kind of thing. Then you reintroduce mouth/teeth/breathing. But if you look at that I don't know how I got from on to the another so really I don't know what you're telling me I how it's all supposed to connect to make sense.

hollow gums hum jazz like the muffle of a record player,
too scratched and dusty, too drowned in gin to remember the tune
but it is a lullaby of sorts, a kiss on the line of a jaw,
a reminder of how to breathe with
flat notes press wide plateau palms
onto my sternum, pulling, pressing, pulling
so that I can inhale the whole world,
all the sour seconds that drink religion
and stumble with tabernacle-suicidal inebriation--
my mouth is full of gritty sand,
but, but I can smell postmodernism on my breath.

here you continue on the sound. (also postmodernism on my breath? Meaningless to me, a collection of pretty words.)

I would say that it was him, that his wicker hands
hold blades of broken mortar molars, but
there is still a buzz of blues rumbling down to my navel;
there is still a voice leaking through the dark corners of my mouth,
one that is not mine,
one that does not speak language or words
or anything one might say.
I know now--he knows now--
he spits me out to sell me to something I do not know
and yet, he is not a wealthy man;
he has only songs and spare, sour teeth,
spare, sour seconds,
a small home under the bridge of my mouth.

And you bring together some of the threads, but without that strong basis at the beginning the rest of this suffers. It carries over well from the prior piece, but within itself there's a lot of fly aways and it depends on some shallow imagery to serve as a crutch to carry it to the conclusion of the thought process. Trim the fat that makes this poem dense and gives it heavy feet. It makes it difficult to get from start to finish because you go off in a whole lot of directions that don't contribute to the rest of the poem.

I find him in my drinking glass.

he is a birdsnest of awkward limbs
torn into two fragmented men like
a giant of myth
rosey-cheeked blood-toothed giant
that holds me in the hollow of his palm
as nothing but an empty skeleton,
collected and counted bones.

Birdnestttt. I swear, this is going to be the most irritating word in the english dictionary if I tell you again Bad word. I think of some old man with three parakeets in a gold cage hopping around a carefully constructed pile of newspaper shreddings and sticks. And it's a birdnest of awkward limbs, to make it worse. Just read it to yourself, what in the world are you imaging with this? A nest made of disembodied arms and legs? Enjambment is shakier here too.

he drilled holes in my knees, my elbows,
my clavilces and skull like he was making some instrument
for the wind to blow through,
an October storm just like the ones
he used to whistle with his lips pressed
and he sets me on a birdhouse perch
where dystrophy locks my knees and in a twist
of languid muscles a song plays its way through my body--

*clavicles.

I love poetry orienting with things of the body, but you have to be careful attaching something for it. We can't get too distracted by the actual body of it, and get caught up in the metaphor of it. If you're literal turning someone into a flute sounds incredibly gory. At some points in this the meaning gets too vague for me to reach and then I get lost in the images of nests made out of limbs. It's got to make the reader think, it's got to have depth or it quickly becomes extremely distracting. And that October storm again! It's brutally introduced again, nothing subtle to build into it. And your reader is forced to hop a gap again.

he still nurses from me,
but it has been a long time since he has nursed from
my breast or a rabbit bone--
he pulls a vein to his lips and he drinks me sore,
he drinks me dry until he cannot walk,
drunkenness sprawled in his footsteps and the swing
of steadying-not-so-steady arms.
he does not know how ashen my insides are, what draught
time has poured down my throat,
how the burns have patterned me empty.

Nice carry over and closure of the main themes at the end, carries over from the beginning which works. It's remained rather dense all the way through so the ending doesn't pack much of a punch. But it's a graceful closure.

Phew, I got studying to do.
Peace.

Kamas