encompass rectangles of space.
Here's a room with no trace
of any living race; for no
bedstead, bookshelf, bureau,
robe, roast or radio is there
in the small, quasi-lair.
It is daytime. The bare window
permits the light to flow
in from beyond and go around
the walls, then on beyond
this room. It isn't bound by four
walls, for one is no more
than made-believe—and forfeited
since she uncommitted
her game and admitted that toys
aren't interesting as boys.
With a clattering noise, her dolls
fell into cardboard stalls
and their home's sunny halls went down
to the crawlspace, a town
of vacant, underground tangles.
I am struck by the contrast of the emptiness of the first flow of the poem, then the noise and conflict of the second, the empty rooms are loud with loss in this poem. An effective contrast. I like how it leaves me with questions. Who is she, who are the boys? The emptiness goes down past the floorboards, the vacant is so hollow at poem's end.
ReplyDeleteWow! Very intense, and well done.
ReplyDelete