310th Virtual Poetry Circle
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Welcome to the 310th Virtual Poetry Circle!
Remember, this is just for fun and is not meant to be stressful.
Keep in mind what Molly Peacock’s book suggested.
Look at a line, a stanza, sentences, and images; describe what you like or don’t like; and offer an opinion. If you missed my review of her book, check it out here.
Today’s poem is from Jehanne Dubrow:
Much Tattooed Sailor Aboard USS New Jersey
Squint a little, and that’s my husband in the photograph, the sailor on the left— the one wearing a rose composed of ink and the Little Bo Peep who stands before a tiny setting sun and the blur on his forearm which might be a boat— while the sailor on the right is leaning in, his fingers touching the other man’s skin, tracing what looks like the top of an anchor or the intricate hilt of a sword, perhaps wiping blood from the artful laceration, in his other hand something crumpled, his cap I think or a cloth to shine brass, lights on a bulkhead, fittings and fixtures, because let’s not forget this picture must be posed, the men interrupted— mops laid down, ropes left uncoiled, or else on a smoke break, Zippo and Lucky Strikes put aside—the men shirtless on a deck, legs bent at beautiful angles, a classical composition this contrast of bodies and dungarees, denim gone black and their shoulders full of shadow— although on second thought how effortless this scene, both of them gazing toward a half-seen tattoo so that we too lean in trying to make out the design on the bicep, close enough we can almost smell the salt of them and the oil of machinery, which is of course the point, as when in a poem I call the cruiser’s engine a pulse inside my palm or describe my husband’s uniform, ask him to repeat the litany of ships and billets, how one deployment he sliced himself on a piece of pipe and how the cut refused to shut for months—Hold still, I tell him, I need to get the exquisite outline of your scar.
What do you think?