always winter wolves

I cannot tell you how excited I am to get to this. And upon reading, this was every bit worth the wait. Your style, your technique; well read, aware of itself, aware of the reader, aware of expectations. One can't form a real opinion of your work until they read all of it, and that, my man is [really] fabulous.

To the review!

Alright. This can't be figured out with one read through, UNLESS, said reviewer latches onto a preconception. I was listening to this while reading your poem..and well the combination was rather grisly. And I adored that. But I need to experience the writing without obstacles.

perdido wrote:ALWAYS WINTER WOLVES

1.

Steve comes through trees
with the other fog-forms of dawn
milk on his breath he brushes
the dew from his jacket

we go to the pool and sit cross legged
in the grass, the smell of chlorine
and vegetables on the grill and
it is almost autumn and it is
no time to be at a pool.

Last night we went to the bar,
the one with vintage arcade games
and whiskey specials the one only
a few feet from home plate.

Later on the curb we sit and talk about women,
wary of cruel urban shadows and streetlight ghosts.
Steve says he painted all his lies white, sweet
like marshmallows in a campfire, none of them
were supposed to bite.

Such driven characterization, this Steve. Steve is associated to nature, is to liquid such as milk and dew, and a pool is where one should not be in what is the end of summer. Then we travel in memories, like down a narrow vein of sight, a world buzzing all about around us, but YOU want US to see this specific route in time and passage of events; we're seeing change in association. What these characters once knew is completely foreign in several respects, as you show. The common topic? Women. YET, you create intrigue, drama, almost without any effort placed it seems: Steve lies. Good job at making me doubt my own reading.

The world in just the first part is vast, filling, and dare I say...complete? And let's not forget your title: always winter wolves. So many possibilities with that, but, let's wait until the end.

2.

Midday we get drunk and go to Wal-mart
scouring the aisles for a sense of self
an anchoring point for souls
that threaten to float away.

You are good. A brief stanza so early to almost whimsically pass off boredom, but also make dramatic irony in a hapless, pointless existence. I can relate to this as well. I was touched with it, and in the piece's overall flow, you could not have found a better spot. I believe my reading so far is right on key. We're seeing age, maturity, the lose of the glamour and light of life dawning in the growing, or grown mind.

3.

Nancy tastes like sky, her cumulonimbus body
leaves lightning-scars on my hands and face.
Every night her cold front destroys my apartment,
snow, bone-matter, ashes, and rain-wells.

I don’t know it yet but this is an age of exile,
waiting in a white steel tower surrounded
by winter wolves, a candle flame town
of driftwood and anemic desert scrub.

In a bare room with a window that faces west I
write out-of-place sonnets on a legal pad
with a pen. The sky is a watercolor dragon
the sky is a shotgun shell in squid ink.

Another name. A reference? Perhaps I'm not getting all of the references here. Maybe missing a key element. Even so, I'm enjoying this too much to care.

HOWEVER, you make a key mistake. One of transitions. You get too much into Nancy and the apartment, displacing the earlier setting and scene. We're losing touch with our ground before. But is that why you used clouds with Nancy? Life drifting away? Losing our sense of grounding and safety? Comfort destroyed?

Perhaps, this is all innuendo as well. I can't be sure. You use imagery with multiple interpretations, at least to my opinion. The imagery of the apartment is one of further bleakness; despite the dramatic landscape you do show, the nature, the sky, the way human art contrasts with natural art creates further conflict that is interesting to read. You've mastered drama. I like that.

But, age of exile. That wording almost screams to belong in the second stanza; but can it not be there? I believe it is because you're showing the speaker to be lost as if in flight with no sight of rest. Again, in pace with my earlier reading.

4.

Steve and I sit on a fence overlooking
mountain pastures and a stream.
In a million years it’ll be a canyon, he says.

When I come home my apartment
is filled with marshmallows, I go to bed
and by morning they have all turned
to blood.

Twists and kicks. Change and nothing that can be done. Lies and horrors of the past that come back to haunt us. Isolation from home. Displacement from reality. Alienation of the self from self and community. And those marshmallows, turning to blood; dreams, baggage, fear, emotions. Weakness of the narrator, or secrets maybe. The blood is admission of failure I believe, or simply resolution that nothing can be done to stop it by morning.

And "always winter wolves"; the enigma of them all. The wolves are the characters? The speaker? Their natural element is a time of death, a time of change, and they seem restless and unable to be at peace unless in that element. Or, you're just showing the passage of time and life.

Fantastic job Perdido. Watch your displacement, no matter how well you do craft a transition on imagery. We need basis to stay sane in the reading without stretching our grasp too far. That said, you could teach me a thing or two. I can tell, and look forward to more writing, whatever it is.

Wow, it was wierd but.. I really liked it. I think it conveyed the message you were trying to get through, though I'm not sure what it was. The wierd stanzas and numbers of lines were unique, and I thought it worked well for this piece. I think a little more punctuation wold have helped it though.

Great job!!
Razzle

P.S.

Steve says he painted all his lies white, sweet
like marshmallows in a campfire...

I liked this similie a lot!