Seven Types of Poem

 

 

1

Poems that begin with silverish moon and a car pulling up. A description of the gravel. And then out steps a young woman with perfumed hair, holding a hatchet, or cherry blossom. Depends on the poem.  The man sits on a sagging green couch, head in his hands, and says, “You never had this kind of conviction when we were together.” Fade out to clouds, their snow banks piling. An owl limps o into o the sky.

 

2

Similes singing, soft and untended and billowing inappropriate, like Marilyn Monroe, hopped up on Cheese Whiz, at your birthday party.

 

3

__________/______________              go ahead, I dare you.

 

4

Age 16 my mom shook up a bottle of Coke and stuck it into her vagina. To abort me. It didn’t work, so here I am.

 

5

Hegel’s last words: "Only one man ever understood me. And he really didn't understand me."

 

6

A graffitied boulder in an urban park. Insert crow.

 

7

The perfumed hair is remorse over eating fellow animals. Marilyn Monroe is the secret drug we all take. The philosopher’s words are all the lips you could have, and should have kissed. The boulder: marriage. The sagging green couch: death. The moon is the moon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sean Lovelace is on a river right now. He has a spinning rod and a beer. Other times he teaches at Ball State University. He recently won the CrazyHorse fiction prize, and his works have appeared in Diagram, Black Warrior Review, Willow Springs, and so on. He blogs at seanlovelace.com.