The BlueIris Semi-Nightly Poem Thread, 9/29/07

[BlueIris]

In the 1994 book, A Formal Feeling Comes: Poems in Form By Contemporary Women, the author had this to say about the series of sonnets from which the following is taken: "The poe(m)...(is) part of a sonnet sequence tracing the rise and fall of the last Empress of China. Tz'u-Hsi entered the Imperial Palance as a fifth-place concubine. When she birthed a son, she rose quickly through the ranks to become Empress at the age of twenty-six. Her last act was to appoint a two-year-old to her throne, and the imperial system collapsed shortly after in 1912...But why sonnets?...Because one theme of the series is duality: heart and mind, ambition and passivity, nurture and destruction. I imagined a woman forced to balance in herself many opposing forces."

"The Empress Receives the Head of a Taiping Rebel"

This is the right gift for a poet
who enjoys ordering the sound of water,
who rises late and draws tight
blinds against the advancing sun. She uncovers
the wooden box, her mouth for one second
gasping, resembling his. Oh, how much his expression
contains! The abandon, the sureness, the moment
he stumbled and the sword spread his throat
wide open. To have it all here,
written down! Frozen possibility, like a fruit
that ripens only once in a thousand years.
She caught him in the act of ripening, and tonight,
like a fruit, he’ll hang on a tree,
whispering to her of longevity.

—Sarah Gorham

[BlueIris]

1. Kick.

[BlueIris]

2. Kick.

[BlueIris]

3. Kick.

[BlueIris]

4. Wow, this one tanked so very, very hard.

How did that happen?

[Poet17]

5. Swanky...

Hey I'm Alicia Prychun, the 17 year-old from the poem a few days back. You know how you Google your own name every so often to see what turns up? Funny, something new! So yeah, I was about 17 when I wrote that poem. I'm 30 now. I totally forgot about it. I think I was in my freshman year of college, and it was a for a creative writing class. I have to ask, who is Blue Iris? How did you find the poem, do I know you? :) I'm so curious now.