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Daughtered Out
Funny you should ask– deoxyribonucleic acid is the basic building block of life, holding the torch in my own little world. Some people are not carrying the torch. “In the presence” may not be the place for you. "Daughtered out" what it means is– you cannot find a descendant of a female ancestor. Don’t believe the hype, because there isn't any to find. There was a girl (absorbed) under my care, but held against her will– until I had become the water under the boat and saw her looking up.
Created from a Google search result: ‘Torch DNA.’ First appeared in the Found Poetry Review’s “PoMoSco,” a collective April 2015 National Poetry Month challenge.
Burn, Burn a Witch
Once, I was ordinary–
irrefutable, beautifully smug,
but I would rather be horizontal.
The horizons ring me like faggots.
In the marketplace, they are piling the dry sticks.
I shall never get out of this– there are two
of me now– the abstracts hover like dull angels.
Widow. The word consumes itself–
On this bald hill, the new year hones its edge.
I do not want a plain box, I want a sarcophagus.
The month of flowering’s finished, the fruit’s in.
This was the land’s end: the last fingers–
Knuckled and rheumatic– first frost and I
walk among the rose-fruit, the marble toes.
They are the last romantics, these candles–
the white light is artificial, and hygienic as heaven.
Touch it– it won’t shrink like an eyeball.
Empty, I echo to the least footfall!
I can stay awake all night, if need be.
The night sky is only a sort of carbon paper.
This is a dark house, very big–
two girls there are– within the house.
It is ten years, now, since we rowed to Children’s Island.
Black lake, black boat, two black, cut-paper people.
A found poem ‘cento’ composed and rearranged from the first lines of the following poems in Sylvia Plath’s Crossing the Water: ‘Wuthering Heights,’ ‘Finisterre,’ ‘Parliament Hill Fields,’ ‘Heavy Women,’ ‘Insomniac,’ ‘I Am Vertical,’ ‘The Babysitters,’ ‘In Plaster,’ ‘Private Ground,’ ‘Widow,’ ‘Candles,’ ‘Magi,’ ‘Small Hours,’ ‘The Surgeon at 2 A.M.,’ ‘Zoo Keeper’s Wife,’ ‘Last Words,’ ‘Two Sisters of Persephone,’ ‘Who,’ ‘Dark House,’ ‘Maenad,’ ‘Witch Burning,’ ‘A Life,’ and ‘Crossing the Water.’
First appeared in the Found Poetry Review’s “PoMoSco,” a collective April 2015 National Poetry Month challenge.
Thigh High Subversion
The right dose
of thigh high subversion
borrows from past and place.
I try to make it abstract.
The work of human hands,
and dreams become reality.
Confident woman
(global chameleon)
of the true north–
–haute couture.
Consider the ground
held on an icy winter:
fiery candles and stone ruins
plunged into ancient culture.
I have seen true Vogue
inspired by an elevator.
She started an affair with
a license to imagine.
©C.L. Quigley, 2018
First appeared in Found Poetry Review’s “PoMoSco,” a collective April 2015 National Poetry Month challenge
Source text: Menkes, Suzy. “Time Traveler.” Condé Nast Traveler 1 Mar. 2015.
Wrapped In Plastic
The Absence of Things
Poem published
A leading online publisher of poetry responding to world events and issues, The New Verse News presents politically progressive poetry in response to current events and topical issues. The poem for Tuesday, June 16th, 2015 is “Lily Pad Lover…”
Never Forgot a Face