the madwoman of congress street bridge (or, how i committed social suicide)
the madwoman of congress street bridge (or, how i committed social suicide)
By DIY Danna
for you who died crossing the congress street bridge
one balmy summer twilight, and my beloved switchblade:
you cut me into pieces and my sum of parts fell into
the black waters of the colorado, and the unbearable
anchor tied to my ankles in a love knot was released.
a mute pedestrian walks by as the body
hurls itself over the northbound railing
and his scream of joy is drowned by
my beautiful baby twin cooing softly, sweetly and
thunder clapping an encore for a broken soul.
time of death: 3:47 AM, thursday, june 22, 2006.
cause: unrequited love letter returned unopened.
and at my unmarked pauper’s grave
the coroner played the harmonica while his
wife sang- sans irony- “Bridge Over Troubled Water”.
There’s a lot to appreciate in this poem – the content (and how it unfolds), its imagery, the mysterious baby twin, and the allusions to a death certificate at the beginning of the third stanza. It’s hard to know where reality ends and where symbolism takes over, because it’s all so beautifully intertwined. Strangely, what I like best is the grammatical structures of the first stanza – very much like George Oppen (minus his frequent line breaks) in how it transforms (and adds) meaning as the sentences unfold. I thought this was a very haunting poem.