No. 56
No. 56
by riley knox
Empty sentences with just
their feet hanging off your lips.
They almost left
and walked to my ear. Meandered.
Maybe your past is riddled with
calls to do whatever for however
much.
Or maybe calls to get whatever
for however much.
Great smoke or a fly bite to the
crotch
of your arm.
You could use your owns words.
To tell me how
the world ends.
You could use your own words.
to tell me when
this world
ends.
Vivaldi used some rope
from his dead wife’s gut to
string his voice to hers.
I’d build a guitar from your
ribs and play
your skin.
Plastic tissue bags wash up into
brush and naked trees.
empty.
With just their arms holding onto
whatever for however
reason.
Bottles in ditches picked up for a
nickle. They almost left. For
whatever for whoever.
Saved up for a smoke or a fly bite to
the crotch of my
arm.
Have no idea what this is about, but it’s got some great lines. Loved the stanza about Vivaldi as well as the repetition of the arm crotch lines…
Pardon me in my assumption when I put out the two characters here as a he and she, with he being the perspective. It’s my bias.
This takes place in a scrabbling existence where plasma is sold to buy heroin and pot is sold to pay for cigarettes (or more weed).
There’s a comparison to the people of this life as either being empty and just pushed along by unseen currents or as having some value to them in their emptiness, in how they might be used by others.
There is the Buk-esque use of a classical music reference thrown in (as Joe mentioned) but failed for me in the gut- I’d have prefered to have it at the end modified a bit in the assonance so’s I feel the tremble of the bass thumped on her ridged chine bone.
Inside of that, there’s an interesting play on the story (her story desired by him) not shared successfully, she says it in a way not recieved (mumbled/whispered/infered) but ends up draped in the trees and lost in the ditch…whereby here the poet reaches into the ditch to retrieve them for what value is intrinsic in them (and then trades them into us for deposit).
I did get the end there also where the bag is put to use collecting the empty bottles. Nice to find someone recycling.
it does start out, “Empty sentences…”