Featherless Biped's "The boi in the belfry is crazy" Thread

[Featherless Biped]

Thanks to everybody: Emilio, Laurie, Neil, Dunc (always with the puns!), Cookie, Jee (I like your suggestion on a poetic level, but will tell you that nothing good can come of that meeting on a human level), Sorella, kristalynn, Scrow (I stole the title from The Case of Charles Dexter Ward); proof; Angela; Matt (how lovely of you to leave a summary; a lot of this one was to exorcise some personal demons, but I feel like my meaning has got through in an artistic way too).

Your company is much appreciated, and makes me very happy.

Today, a better version of a failed villanelle that I've been kicking around. The voice of mean self-talk is often a whisper, not a shout.

[Featherless Biped]

Magic Cabinet

When you play house, the closet lives in you.
You sell your silence cheap to pay the mortgage.
You always tiptoe over the trapdoor.

By day, you stuff your heartbeat in a briefcase,
bundle your breath, secure it with a tie.
The shoes walk you to work. The suit wears you.

At night, you wrap your mouth and eyes in shadow.
You’re good at poker. Nothing up your sleeve;
the ace of hearts is hiding in your throat.

The stage is rigged. However hard you tap dance,
you cannot shine the spotlight on yourself.
Behind your back, the magic trick does you,

transmogrifies your ribcage to a garden,
obscures the flowers with a handkerchief...
Voila! The rose refigured is a snake.

In bitter ink, the story rewrites you.
You say you’re straight. An optical illusion;
your spine inside collapses like a corkscrew:
the hidden springs of gender, bending you.

[UnkleBob]

I really like those last lines of "gender, bending you". I also like imagine of someone tap dancing vigorously yet failing to coax a spotlight - I hear a little rat a tat tat music behind that. I really am not good with onomatopoeia, but maybe you get the drift.

Anyway, good luck with Napo. It seems to have started well.

[BruisedOrange]

Such a well done piece on the inner struggle of sexual identity. You've got some great images and word play here! I really enjoyed reading this, and looking forward to more.

Jen

[Dunc]

Rachael

Magic Cabinet is a wonderful poem - sharp, intriguing, ingenious, focused, unfolded with forceful and engaging images, beautifully constructed.

Lovely work for anywhere, a beacon here.

Much admiration / Dunc

[Steven]

Hi Featherless, a pretty daunting start to see such a wonderful poem in 'Dragon's Head'. This is enjoyable to read for the concrete details but also for the way it discusses the theme of desire and memory. I think this one's definitely a keeper.

'Magic Cabinet' is impressive to. And the endings of both poems leave a finish.

'your spine inside collapses like a corkscrew:
the hidden springs of gender, bending you.'

[Arlene]

Chilling detailing of a crime scene, with brilliant recrimination. (Dragon's Head)

[Arlene]

ouch, the final verse hurts. so good and painful. xo (Magic Cabinet)

[Scavella]

Magic Cabinet:

Oh hell yeah. Love this

"The stage is rigged. However hard you tap dance,
you cannot shine the spotlight on yourself."

and the last strophe. Strong start to the month indeed.

And as for Dragon's Head, I like the wordplay at the start.

[5th column]

Magic Cabinet as closet. Wonderful. Taking the theme of misdirection and turning it inward is a great idea but to do it in NaPo and with such precision is tremendous.

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

Both pieces present delicate topics with finesse. You have marvelous compression in these pieces. You say little, but you imply much.

BrianIs AtYou

[Speug]

Hello Rachael,

I like both of these a lot. The idea of wanting to burn air because it somehow carries a trace of what's said in it is wonderful, as is the line wondering where ogasms come from and, again, the idea of somehow reversing them - of wanting to erase everything about this relationship.

The second one caught me out a bit, because at first I thought the bind N finds themself in was a general Prufrockian malaise; the twist (not presented as a twist - i.e. a shock - but a subtle shifting of the reader's perspective) in the final S really brought the whole thing to life.

Cheers,
Paul.

[Scrow]

Hello,

Yes, yes, yes I do like Magic Cabinet. Spot-on, that, I'd say. I particularly like the spine/corkscrew, which is so clever, being visually striking but an internally perfect metaphor for the subject. The rose/snake interplay is clever, too - but I need to spend some more time with that image to 'get' it fully.

Sarah

[Featherless Biped]

Many thanks to UnkleBob, Jen, Dunc, Steven, Arlene, Scavella, Neil (this one's been boiling for a while), Smiling Brian, Paul, and Sarah. Your kindness overwhelms me.

[Featherless Biped]

At the Martian Embassy

Two women shimmer through the mentholated Canberra summer. One wears a blue dress, too heavy for this heat, with long sleeves that cover her wrists. The other wears cargo shorts and a singlet. They are rubbing their swollen eyes, trying to look not at each other, staring at the Shine Dome instead.

“I wish aliens would come down and carry us away,” says the woman in the blue dress. The woman in the singlet says, “Don’t go.” She holds out a stick of gum, but the woman in blue shakes her head.

Above the dome, something shocking appears.

harsh cries of gang-gangs
blood red over black feathers
we are still alive