I thought I could stop
time by taking apart
the clock. Minute hand. Hour hand.
Nothing can keep. Nothing
is kept. Only kept track of. I felt
passing seconds
accumulate like dead calves
in a thunderstorm
of the mind no longer a mind
but a page torn
from the dictionary with the definition of self
effaced. I couldn’t face it: the world moving
on as if nothing happened.
Everyone I knew got up. Got dressed.
Went to work. Went home.
There were parties. Ecstasy.
Hennessy. Dancing
around each other. Bluntness. Blunts
rolled to keep
thought after thought
from roiling
like wind across water—
coercing shapelessness into shape.
I put on my best face.
I was glamour. I was grammar.
Yet my best couldn’t best my beast.
I, too, had been taken apart.
I didn’t want to be
fixed. I wanted everything dismantled and useless
like me. Case. Wheel. Hands. Dial. Face.
2020
Regular
Contemporary
2022
2023
Faith & Hope
Identity
Strength & Resilience
Alliteration
the repetition of the same letter or sound at the beginning of words appearing in succession
Antanaclasis
The repetition of a word within a phrase, in which the second use of the word utilizes a different and sometimes contrary meaning from the first.
Assonance
The repetition of similar vowel sounds that takes place in two or more words in proximity to each other within a line; usually refers to the repetition of internal vowel sounds in words that do not end the same.
Internal Rhyme
A rhyme involving a word in the middle of a line and another at the end of the line or in the middle of the next.
Metaphor
a comparison between two unrelated things through a shared characteristic