April 7, 2010: How Simile Works, Albert Goldbarth
How Simile Works
Albert Goldbarth
The drizzle-slicked cobblestone alleys
of some city;
and the brickwork back
of the lumbering Galapagos tortoise
they’d set me astride, at the “petting zoo”….
The taste of our squabble still in my mouth
the next day;
and the brackish puddles sectioning
the street one morning after a storm….
So poetry configures its comparisons.
My wife and I have been arguing; now
I’m telling her a childhood reminiscence,
stroking her back, her naked back that was
the particles in the heart of a star and will be
again, and is hers, and is like nothing
else, and is like the components of everything.
On this day in…
2009: Crossing Over, William Meredith
2008: The World Wakes Up, Andrew Michael Roberts
2007: Hour, Christian Hawkey
2006: For the Anniversary of My Death, W.S. Merwin
2005: The Last Poem About the Snow Queen, Sandra M. Gilbert
