Good morning lovelies! Today’s poem is a three-fer! It is in response to a found poem (or found poetry book, in this case) written in the form of an abecedarian poem that is also an acrostic poem. I wrote this piece last year during a poetry marathon wherein myself and Cassie Caverhill wrote 12 poems in a row over a 12 hour period. This wild and crazy endeavour is actually part of a 24-hour poetry marathon! The Poetry Marathon is run by Caitlin Jans (Thomson) and Jacob Jans, two writers and editors living in Toronto, Canada.
One of the poetry prompts was to write an abecedarian, which essentially is a piece where the first word of each line is a letter of the alphabet. You don’t have to begin with ‘a’, but whatever letter you start with, the rest of alphabet has to follow in order until you reach the last letter before the one you started with! For example, I began with the letter ‘c’, so my last line had to start with the letter ‘b’. Although the first letter of each line does not spell a word, is it in an ‘order’, hence the ‘acrostic’ form sneaking in.
As far as the ‘found poem’ component goes, Cassie was out walking (I think…or maybe it was biking, she’s addicted!) and she found a poetry book on the sidewalk. Yup, a poetry book on the sidewalk (on St.Luke, a street in Riverside) like some kind of literary road kill! She scooped it up. It was the book War of the Foxes by Richard Siken, which is, indeed, a fantastic, haunting, gorgeous collection of poetry! So I integrated some of the words from a poem called Birds Hover the Trampled Field into my poem. A found poem is when you use ‘found’ text (like a poem in a book you found on the street! or a grocery list or a Facebook post…) and integrate it into a new poem and/or, in this case, I was also writing in response to what I read, er, to what Cassie read out loud to me. It was a very intense and inspiring experience that I hope shows in the piece! So, thanks to Cassie and to Richard Siken!
When Cassie Reads Me a Poem from War of the Foxes
found poetry book by Richard Siken
For C
Cassie says: let me read you this poem
Delivered through teeth, widsom-white, waxed poetic
Ear-marked fold on pages pressing dead bugs, she recites
Felled, we interrupt his words with breathy laughter: they are brilliant, we
Grieve, as poets do when they read poetry they wish they wrote
Hungry for more, we accept our fate as less than and
Integrate: verbs virus my veins: I wanted to explain myself to myself
Jealousy slips off my shoulder like a loose bra strap, a sensuous exit
Killed gently with his words, I give my body to the foxes in his field
Longing to be lavished by his language
Myself will explain this to myself as honouring, as respecting, as devoting
Nascent desires to penning poetry, braining out the parts meant to wither
Or disappear before my body lets go of its living – before the dumping begins
Persistent philandering with fiction, non-fiction needs patience lest my
Quarrel with emptiness shrink like weed stems post-blade – wilting
Retreating to trampled times when witches weren’t burned
Stake-severed and feared
Take a body, dump it, drive, she reads resplendent
Undulating voice-song, I gather our awe abecedarian
Visualizing Siken cursive-ing letters into masterpieces
What divine exhalation dropped his book in Cassie’s path?
X-spotted treasure pavement-placed on St. Luke by St. Luke? Evangelical
Yogi-of-the-gospel? We hive-five, giddy to solve the mystery
Zephyr-ed through the open windows, sheered spring sunlight staining
Acrostic aftermath into
Being
VANESSA SHIELDS 