Mexican cowboy tile, a stone-dry fountain,
a clock who doesn't know which way is down.
Cut-end tulips in a curvy glass vase,
red lips barely parted to reveal
starchy-yellow pollen.
I hear it's beautiful in the summer,
but in high deserts, trees are few and short.
There are no fireflies but wildfires down the mountain,
no lightning bugs but storms on the horizon.
Indian paintbrushes-- dipped in fires of sand and sun--
scorch the canvas with brushbark bushes.
Concrete sundials grow cool moss,
which is why we use a pendulum clock.
Ticking until the tock-
clang sends hands into a tailspin, counterspin,
and suddenly, it's moving all backwards,
all widdershins, withershins, widderschynnes:
spinning off-key and off-pivot like a missing fulcrum
until it lands-- splash-- into the algae of a backyard pond.
Soda bread and goulash
on days when snow smells like rain,
a bright yellow house on the corner
is the birth of a star:
no one dares look
away as it goes up
in flames.
Hey, Widdershins. (Sorry in advance if this is an unhelpful review, I'm rusty). Your poem is great, really thoughtful and thought provoking. Everything I read made me feel like you were talking about magic and like I might have been reading a book by Neil Gaiman. Anyways, I see one typo. Here it is "until is lands-- splash--into the algae of a backyard pond." I'm pretty sure the "is" is supposed to be "it". That is all, again great poem. 
I didn't see any specific rhyme scheme with this particular work, but as I have said before in almost all of my poetry reviews, it flows nicely off of the tongue which, at least to me, is an important quality in poems. I find this work very fascinated, especially because of the stream-of-conscience style of writing, seemingly jumping from topic to topic, but it all being connected anyhow. Another thing I really like about this poem is the end line, which stands alone from all of the other lines, which puts special emphasis on this line, of which I think makes a good ending for the poem. Now down to the nit pickings of the poem. For the line, "Soda bread and goulash" I would add a comma after goulash just because I seem to naturally pause there when I am reading it. That is really all I can saw about it! Like Birkhoff said before me, bravo, a fantastic piece.
120,212 Literary Works • 649,111 Reviews
Points: 1476
Reviews: 221
Donate