Reception

Posted by Dave Bonta on September 21, 2009 (last modified at 12:15 am, 9/22/09)

In every bowl there’s a howl hidden,
a cracked moon, a watery shiver.
In every glass a palace,
in every pot a broth, a salt,
in every beaker a shriek of frantic molecules:
words that alight in the mind
just before sleep, like birds
coming to roost in that copse
that feeds the wild wood
& its one good bowl.

Filed in Poems & poem-like things. Bookmark the permalink. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.Print Print

11 Responses to Reception

  1. Rachel Barenblat says:
    September 22, 2009 at 8:48 am

    This is gorgeous, Dave.

    Reply
  2. Deb says:
    September 22, 2009 at 10:27 am

    Yes. It is.

    Reply
  3. Dave says:
    September 22, 2009 at 4:18 pm

    Thanks, Deb and Rachel!

    Reply
  4. Peter says:
    September 22, 2009 at 11:01 pm

    This one is so fun to say and say.

    I love that first line. I love how bowl hides howl’s owl, makes it ole. Great tug there.

    “In every glass a palace”: unforgettable.

    Reply
  5. Therese Broderick says:
    September 23, 2009 at 9:23 am

    Following on Peter’s comment — The eye rhyme of “bowl” with “howl” amplifies the undertone of “bowel;” and the vowel of “copse” puts pressure on the last vowel of the poem, again reverberating with “bowel.” Bowels as another kind of receptacle for feed and sound. A poem for the autumn equinox: equal spellings for different sounds received by the ear and guts.

    Reply
  6. Laura Sorrells says:
    September 25, 2009 at 11:26 pm

    Gorgeous indeed. I love the cracked moon, the watery shiver. A lonesome enso of a poem. There’s an interesting almost-loop that really makes that metaphor work for me, there at the end of the poem. The way the copse feeds the wood and then the one good bowl almost feels like a circle but not quite. thanks.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email is never published nor shared. Required fields are marked *

*
*

URLs are converted to links, and three or more links in one comment will cause it to be sent to the moderation queue. Constructive criticism is always welcome. You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

  • Smorgasblog

    • Metaphors for the Moon
      Early marriage is a wetland, a marsh
      of co-mingling reeds, breeding birds.

    • Cleaning My Attic
      Cast-iron Royal, weighty and not regal at all but seriously proletarian, ostensibly portable in your anonymous black case: my secret unmusical instrument, which I lugged to cafes before they were wireless or even wired...

    • Clumps and Voids
      The program description, however, devolves into the fey. "The lingam (or linga) is a cylindrical votary object that represents the Hindu god Shiva, and a dispute about its meaning has been going on for many centuries." When a phallus is tagged with the museum label of "cylindrical votary object," I lose hope that the speaker will be introduced as Professor Wendy Doniger: don of dongs.

    • botanizing
      On calm days, the soil swirls and rises in isolated twisters. On a windy day when the wheat is being harvested — a day like today — the soil lifts like a yellow curtain, obliterating the sky.

    • The Twitching Line
      My uncle, gutting a fish:
      removing the fins from either side,
      tipping the knife below

      the little anus, pointing the tail-
      end away, slitting it to the gills,
      then plunging in a hand

      to scoop the organs out, soft
      and scarlet as a litter of kittens.

    • The Ordinary and the Wild
      I had a dream the other night about a tall machine, like a crane or an android giraffe, lanky with angles of metal that reach up to the sky when they should somehow be digging. When I woke I felt taller for a moment, and also deeper, as if the soles of my feet had met up with some spilled honey or errant tar while I walked in my sleep.

    • Busily Seeking... Continual Change
      So the mountain was steep? I threw a couple of windbreakers, yogurts and miscellaneous snacks (really, whatever I could lay my hands on at the last minute), wallet, phone, bottles of water--yes, just the things I thought to grab into a new REI bright yellow daypack--and off we went. That was it. Toss things in a bag and go.

    • Chatoyance
      And on the other side, what I
      set in motion: the open field, the low hill,
      a crease scored in bent blades of grass
      where I forgot the wall stood,
      my footsteps blurring as the
      grass unbends.

    • Velveteen Rabbi
      There are trade-offs: in the womb we knew perfect intimacy, but couldn't meet. Now we are separate, which is at once the source of loneliness (especially for him, I'm guessing) and the source of our ability to connect.

    • Will Buckingham
      My small guide and I then did our double-act of worshipping at the shrine, at which point the monk then declared that, once again, I was not doing it right. There followed another twenty minute lesson in proper bowing -- different from the previous lesson, in fact -- and if I have retained anything it is that one’s feet must be aligned like the lines in the number 8 -- an auspicious number in China.

  • Read more (Archives)

    Subscribe to Smorgasblog

  • "On the whole I concentrated on things and people that I found charming and splendid; my notes are also full of poems and observations on trees and plants, birds and insects."
    — Sei Shonagon, 994 A.D.

`