Author: elenabetsworth

“A Hunger Artist, 2015”

1.
You pick one pre-made excuse,
A hollow little lie crafted with the careful fingers
Of detox teas and runway models,
So you can push away the plate in front of you, offer it up
Like a tribute to an ancient god.
Swallow your words as your body cries out
That one taste is not enough. Can’t you
See your temple crumbling into ruins?

Pretend you do not know what hunger is, as if
It does not crouch on your shoulder, growling in your ear,
Clawing at your stomach, gnawing on your bones.
Smile, even though we both know all
You’ve eaten today
Is four pieces of celery,
Three bites of a granola bar,
Two sticks of gum,
One apple,
And your daily dose of self-loathing.

2.
Under buzzing fluorescent lights,
Your warped reflection dances in the mirror,
Twisting the sharp lines of your limbs, tallying
Each imperfection. But I see
A galaxy, painted in shades of gold and brown.
The burning sun glimmers in your hair, kissing
Your body with constellations of freckles. In your eyes
Seethes the endless rage of the ocean. The curve of your hip
Boasts the unknowable strength of heroes; like Atlas
Holding the weight of the world in shaking hands, you were
Sculpted from ivory but baptised in a hurricane.

3.
These words catch in my throat, tangle around my tongue,
So I will say them in the only way I know,
Scrawled in ink across the canvas of the sky.
Look for my stuttering in the spaces
Between the stars, hold them tight until your soul aches raw with
The truth: Perhaps you are not perfect, but
My dear, you have always been enough.

“Some Verses on the Burning of My Last Cigarette”

On your birthday, I smoke a cigarette
For you, inhale deep, hoping it kills me.
Acetic smoke coats my lungs with regret,
And I wonder: Is there a world where we
Still burn with bright, blistering obsession?
We were skin-on-skin touch blazing red-hot,
Hungering hands, lipstick-stained addiction.
Your nicotine smile ran off with my heart.

I always deserved better. Still, I feel
My heart long for those days- when I fell fast
With consequences never seeming real,
And chased menthol kisses too sweet to last.
You scorched my skin, but your heat was my home.
I still miss you.

(But only when I’m alone).

“Soñador”

I fell in love with a dreamer,
Making his wishes on the stars
And stripes, but no longer silently waiting
For an answer.

*

“I don’t remember much about México.
The stairs to our home descended beneath the street,
A hidden cave carved into the earth.
My tears turned the floor to blood.”

*

We will immediately terminate
President Obama’s two illegal executive amnesties.

He defied federal law
And the Constitution

To give amnesty to 5 million illegal immigrants.

*

My father says it will be a “merit-based system,”
Almost like he’s trying to convince himself, knowing
If I lose this, there are many things I cannot forgive:

I started learning Spanish
Just in case.
I almost convince myself that it’s to talk to his mother but

He leaves open a page on his laptop.
The Spanish military offers citizenship in exchange for service and

He asks me to run away with him, to Canada or France,
Pretends he’s only teasing,
But his eyes are serious when

Drunk on seven-dollar wine, he asks me to marry him.
There’s no hesitation when I answer
Yes, despite knowing that

Our love is built on contingency plans.

*

“There were at least ten layers of people in the truck,
All stacked on top of each other.
My mother was in the middle but she still felt it—
The concavity of her lungs under the weight
Of all those dreams.”

*

“Nunca he sido bueno con las palabras,” I say,
The syllables clumsy on my tongue,
Consonants crashing together, vowels catching on my teeth.

He kisses me and tells me my accent is terrible.

*

“When border control came, someone hid
Me and my sister in a tree. My mother
Couldn’t find us. The others tried to silence her but
Her screams still echo in my chest. How can anyone
Understand that kind of fear unless they’ve lived it?”

*

They are here illegally.
They shouldn’t be very worried.

I do have a big heart.

We’re going to take care of everybody.
We’re going to have a very strong border.
We’re going to have a very solid border.

*

“Eres lo que siempre a querido,” he says.
“Te amo, te amo, te amo.”

“Viola Sororia”

Cross-legged in the grass, she braids my hair
Over, under, over, under,
Twisting together girl and violets
Blue and brown as a bruise.
Knucklebones press into the nape of my neck, her touch pulling me under,
Over, under, over.
I understand how Sappho must feel,
Her words in fragments,

Decades stretching between sentences,

Tongue buried beneath centuries of silence.

(Sweet mother, I cannot speak.
Slender Aphrodite has overcome me
With longing for this girl.)

Only the violets speak here. Their quiet purple kiss
Root my fingers in the earth with
The wet dirt-taste of want coating my lips,
Heart throbbing in time with her fingers moving
Over, under, over, under.

“The Walnut Tree”

The soft-touched liquid light
Drips down skeleton branches, stained red and gold by autumn leaves,
While you, unable to resist the siren song of trees and grass, abandon the worn trail tamed and molded by human hand
To pause beneath a tree— ancient, somber, wild.
Dirt clings to your knees as you kneel before this temple made of wood and search among its roots,
To uncover a walnut, the black outside peeling away from wrinkled skin.
The dying layer, meant to protect, turns your fingers dark.
They used to turn this into ink, you know, you say, reverently holding your palm in the dancing sunbeam. What a human thing to do.
The walnut leaves its mark on both of us, you
Staining fingerprints across my ribcage,
Biting wine-dark kisses down my neck.
I’ve always been a skeptic but you,
You find god in the smallest things. And this smile, soft and secretive and burning into my soul like the sun itself,
Is enough to cause a conversion.

Poetic Analysis

Borzutzky embraces the complexities of modern love and modern poetry, crafting a poem that is winding and bordering on confusing in its lack of continuity. The non-linear structure and absence of names forms a speaker who is absent except in love. The reader is left unable to parse out the characters, questioning which “she” is being described– are they all the same woman, or does each have her own distinct relationship to the speaker? The ambiguity and lack of linear timeline allows for an exploration of love in all of its forms. Love in relation to sexuality is separated between “gay teenage boys [who] want monogamy” and “heterosexual boys [who] prefer ‘friends with benefits'” (lines 9-12). Borzutzky also incorporates small moments of other types of love: familial love in “I love you, she said, as she smacked her child’s head” and platonic love in the friends who “meet in a café to discuss mutual funds and stock options” (lines 49, 58-59).

In his exploration of romantic love, Borzutzky investigates the dating norms of the modern world. In the anecdote of the date who “thought [he] was trying to stick her with the bill,” the gendered expectations of dating are challenged (lines 30-31). The subversion of this causes a discomfort between the two individuals, until the date realizes that he is “unaware of dating etiquette” and is “charmed” by his apparent inexperience (lines 32-33). Throughout the first section, the poem has been arranged in stanzas of two lines, each of which ends in enjambment, flowing seamlessly into the next stanza. While the reading may be seamless, the shape of the poem on the page is fragmented, reflecting the non-linear structure and the complex, broken depiction of love within the poem. However, at the point which the speaker breaks the unspoken dating norms, the shape of the poem suddenly changes from the abrupt stanzas into a quatrain. The second section does not follow a pattern of line numbers, but the stanzas are longer and contain a mix of enjambed and endstopped lines, providing a steadier understanding of love.

Tsui provides a contrast to the unsteady nature of love in Borzutzky’s poetry. Her poem is constructed from quatrains, liberally using punctuation but omitting capitalization throughout the entirety of the poem. Where Borzutzky embraces the confusing aspects of love, Tsui demonstrates a certainty in the nature of love, declaring “mother, i’m gay, mother i’m gay and so happy with her” (lines 29-30). The lack of capitalization and the spaces stretching between the stanzas mirror the relationship between the poet and her mother– there is an unreachable gap between them as her mother “will not listen” and “shakes her head,” denying the reality of her daughter’s love.

The conflict between familial love and romantic love is a heavy presence within the poem. Tsui challenges the non-recognition of her romantic relationship as legitimate through the use of the quatrains. Where “the vast majority of Tsui’s other poems follow a free-verse format,” here she conforms her love into the traditional poetic standards (American Women’s Poetry 99). Through this, she demands her relationship be acknowledged as “social convention,” refusing to accept that her love is “not invited” into her family since she is “neither [her] husband nor [her] wife” (line 44, American Women’s Poetry 99). While the majority of the poem handles this conflict, the final three lines diverge in subject matter, describing her “[dreams] of dragons and water” and her home as “in her arms, [their] bedroom ceiling the wide open sky” (lines 50-52). This description takes their relationship as a love that is quietly intimate and opens it to the world, defying the norms which demand their silence.

Poetic Analysis

While a Modernist, Frost’s poetry has echoes of traditional forms from previous poetic periods. Through a dedication to meter and rhyme, his poems of “traditional themes use common settings to debate humanity’s place in a world of natural alterity,” examining within these the place of love (Cambridge History 520). Despite his “deliberately anachronistic” style, he conforms to the Modernist style of examining love and finding it wanting (Cambridge History 519). In “Wind and Window Flower,” he advises “lovers [to] forget [their] love” and listen to the story he has to tell of a failed romance (line 1). The brief romance between the “winter breeze” and “window flower” ends as quickly as it begins, with the wind “a hundred miles away” after the flower is unable to connect with his “sigh[s]” (lines 3-4, 17, 26). The inevitable failure of their love is foreshadowed in the wind’s concern with “dead weeds and unmated birds,” object distinctly connected with death and loneliness (line 15). Similarly, the window flower is paralleled with the “cagèd yellow bird” hanging above her, unable to reach out beyond the boundaries of the “pane’ of glass separating the two lovers (lines 7, 9).

Despite the somber subject matter, his use of meter and rhyme scheme in quatrains of ABCB is reminiscent of a children’s story book. This is further achieved through the almost whimsical use of the wind and a flower to represent the lovers within the narrative, a device used frequently in fairy tales– stories which traditionally finish in a “happily ever after.” The combination of these characteristics creates a cheerful tone which contrasts against the theme of lost love, calling into question whether a true love story is achievable in a modern world.

This contrast of beauty with pain continues within the poetry of Langston Hughes, famed founding father of the Harlem Renaissance. In “Love Song for Lucinda,” Hughes describes a “ripe plum,” “bright star,” and “high mountain” (lines 2, 8, 14). Each of these images, as objects within nature, would typically be associated with beauty. Hughes takes this assumption and subverts it in the second half of each stanza. While the plum is sweet, it leaves the taster with an “enchantment [that] will never let you be,” revealing the obsessive aspect of love (lines 5-6). The imagery of the star in the second stanza draws inspiration from the traditional depictions of the Northern Star as a constant, often used to symbolize the steady presence of love. Hughes challenges this portrayal with the “burning flame” of the star, arguing for the unpredictable nature of love (line 11).

The Cambridge History argues that Hughes “seems never to have attempted a full-fl edged love poem” throughout his career (718). I would argue that this “Love Song” is indeed a love poem. The lack of subject simply calls into question why Hughes developed this attitude towards love. When viewed in the context of the questions asked by many scholars, including “’was [Hughes] in the closet,’ or ‘was he gay,’” this poem demonstrates the dangerous nature of queer love in the Modernist period– when one cannot be freely open with their love, love becomes a source of pain that must be concealed behind a female-named subject (Cambridge History 717).

Poetic Analysis

Gilman takes on the voice of a housewife, initially forming the home as a “dear-loved dwelling place,” declaring “Why should I ever weary for aught that I find not here?” (lines 3-4). She argues that within the house is her “lord and [her] love” and “[her] children dear,” the people for whom she labors (line 2). However, this optimistic view of her role within the home breaks down by the second stanza, unable to sustain itself for long. She soon finds herself “bound with the bands of Duty, rivetted tight” and unable to escape the role she has been wedged into (line 6). Rather than seeing her labor as enjoyable, she characterizes herself as a “serving squaw,” comparing her plight to the oppression of Native American women pressed into servitude (line 8). She despairs in the seemingly endless routine of the same tasks, saying that she oversees the “soiling and cleaning of things… Soil them and clean them and soil them — soil them and clean them again” (lines 11-12). This cycle is inescapable and mundane, a repetition that is observable in the quatrains of the poem. Much like the housewife, the poem is stuck in a repetitive cycle of four lines. She desperately attempts to maintain the cycle, her only hope “a possible love and praise” from those for whom she performs the labor (line 16). There seems to be an undercurrent of despair, acknowledging that the likelihood of this “love and praise” will not come, as she performs “invisible labor” which is often overlooked (line 16).

Consistent with the Realism and Naturalism period, Gilman takes advantage of the “pronounced sense of poetry’s potential as a cultural force of critique and expressive empowerment” in order to argue for the liberation of women(American Women’s Poetry 14). By displaying the negative side of mother and wifehood, she brings to light the struggles of women confined to the home. Gilman is far from the only feminist interacting with poetry in this way: “Poetry’s engagement with the eruptive force of feminism… [emerged] most visibly and vocally during two iterations of feminist movements in the 1900s and 1910s… linking the political to the personal” (American Women’s Poetry 17). This poem takes the “personal,” the experiences of nearly every woman of the period, and invokes a political stance condemning the gender norms this system is rooted in. In her final stanza, Gilman invokes the strength of women in her characterization of the housewife as “the Mother of Nations!”– subverting the existing power dynamic and imagining a future which grants women agency over their labor (line 19).

Poetic Analysis

Whitman’s “To a Stranger” reflects on the idealization of love, addressing the “you” of the poem as the “he I was seeking, or she I was seeking” (line 2). The “stranger” is left ambiguous in all characteristics, including gender, as they are referenced as both a “boy” and a “girl” (line 5). The body of the “stranger” is left without any defining characteristics, as they give of their ” eyes, face, [and] flesh,” while Whitman himself gives of his “beard,” assigning himself a concrete idea of gender that clashes against the stranger’s genderlessness nature. This uncertainty is reflected in Whitman’s characterization of the pair as “fluid,” suggesting a queerness in both sexuality and gender (line 4). While unusual for the Romantic period, Whitman has “often [been] credited with inventing the language of homosexual love” with speculations of his attraction towards men (Cambridge History 330).

The ambiguity of the mysterious stranger allows for an idealization of them as a romantic partner; if Whitman and the reader know nothing of them, it leaves space for the building of unrealistic expectations. This is in line with the tradition of “ideal love” that Selinger argues for. Ideal love is the romanticized love of poetic tradition, “a mystical merger, an absolute satisfaction in which contingency and difference melt away… whether that love is with another person or with the divine” (Selinger 4). Whitman describes this “merger” as the stranger’s “body has become not [theirs] only nor left [his] body [his] only,” displaying a reverence for the forming relationship (line 6). Despite the Romantic divergence from the religious tones of the Early National period, this is reminiscent of the imagery employed by Bradstreet.

Emerson also pulls from religious imagery, subverting the god-oriented poetry of the Early National period. Rather than crediting love to the Christian god, he creates love as a religious authority, mimicking Biblical commandments in his exhortation to “give all to love; / Obey thy heart… Follow it utterly” (lines 1-2, 9). He turns the Puritan system on its head, offering an arguably stricter doctrine of love which demands “friends, kindred, days, / Estate, good-fame, / Plans, credit and the Muse” from the individual seeking romance (lines 3-5). This conception of love fully embraces the obsessive, all-consuming nature of love, elevating it as a transcendental experience. Those in love, he asserts, will have “souls above doubt, / Valor unbending” and will eventually “return / More than they were, / And ever ascending” (lines 19-20, 21-23). In contrast to Bradstreet’s conception of god’s everlasting love, Emerson argues that it is love, not religious devotion, which elevates man.