Monostich #8 Cratch- How to find a Chimaera
The racist/classist/sexist is unveiled
only when their foot slips off your neck
11 thoughts on "Monostich #8 Cratch- How to find a Chimaera"
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The racist/classist/sexist is unveiled
only when their foot slips off your neck
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ooph strong image
Thank you! Stole this from several longer poems I’ve been working on. So much hesitation to publish as a stand alone line. Ultimately I had the deadline and picked this instead of the sillier one.
The chimaera as a metaphor here is spot on!
I agree and as sometimes happens it was my brilliant partner who first said this. I kept using the three words together and was telling them they were the same beast and they just spit put Chimaera and as so often happens their words stuck because they are so good at words.
That’s sweet.
I like how the slashes seem like veils being slashed away or navels that swelling successions of nesting dolls must sluice through. I like the cadence of the second line: I can feel the struggle, the sole slip away, and the rasping breath of recovery in “neck”. The whole poem writhes and morphs and mutates, almost like those nacreous masks that characters where in Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly adaptation. Really rich, potent, honest, indignant pair here.
I appreciate that you felt this so viscerally.
I still haven’t seen that movie. I love that the slashes remind you of nesting dolls. Your mind is so interesting!
Also calling the lines an indignant pair! Reminds me of course of the Blake line you always quote
A sad, harsh truth. Too many hidden dangers appear only after it’s (nearly) too late. Great write!
Thanks H.A.
Sprung from a question a wise woman asked of me which was “How do you experience this?”
And also musings on the lack of this in their life.
The thing is I actually meant this in more of a normal life kind of way. Although there are extremes which lead to death the subtle forms feel just as strangling. I think we are so accustomed to the foot we don’t even know it’s there.
The title is an integral element of the poem inviting the reader to engage the single-line body. They work well together here, Jerielle. Another piece of perfection
Oooo! I’m so glad you commented on that! Thank you!