Monday, March 21, 2011

Sign Inventory, Week 10

"Bodily Fluid Clean-Up Kits" by Amy Pence

It goes beyond palliatives, such care. You won't see them
perched on shelves at the Pic & Pac. It's never copious at first.

For some it collects in the arteries or in the brainstem: vengeance,
obsession, or regret moves through channels, ends life

in a shudder. At its core, divorce makes everyone rotten:
even the child, daydreaming in her father's Cutlass

Oldsmobile that Summer of Love, the sky romantic
with possibility. The child crafts a different future,

unmakes a ludicrous past. In the front seat, the father
strokes the hot-pantsed leg of his current paramour,

her hair flat-ironed, winsome. The child feels
the world's skin: porous and tender to the aching.

  • author writes in free-verse style
  • couplets
  • title acts as an interesting twist for the discourse of the text
  • throughout the poem the reader feels a type of sexual personae from the narrator
  • get the feeling that a mistake(s) have been made (i.e. sex & unexpected pregnancy)
  • understanding of the child's realization of himself being an "accident"
  • very sensuous and sinsuous imagery
  • ambiguous but presents enough information for the reader to gather an overall idea/theme of the poem
  • final line in the poem leaves the reader with a sense of loss, hopelessness, and weight.

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