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Presenting the winner of Boston Review’s Second
Annual Poetry Contest: Stephanie Strickland
This poem is also
available as hypertext
|
The Ballad of Sand
and Harry Soot
0
Sand was a gourd fanatic
and she played
a
glass
marimba.
1
Harry Soot
loved to listen.
0
When Sand shook,
a green
ribbon of rainsound
rose and fell in the air,
and when
she let her mallet
fall, the palest of violets, a screen of violet
silver unscrolled.
1
Soot ground
his keys
in
his pocket,
defacing his MetroCard.
0
Should Sand sing,
1
Harry felt
himself leaning over a piano
loosening
his tie. As he reached out
his hand,
it was as if the inside of seventeen
stretched
balloons expanded past ivory,
past gray,
past transparence. A single spot,
hung from
the chrome scaffolding, bore
down
on the hoof
of his nail.
0
Sand had a wardrobe
made of twirlies.
1
Harry Soot
tried to
find a center. Beneath or beyond.
A point
to yield or resist.
Liquefaction
of furbelows.
Buglebead
ballast. Contour cups
of constructed silk.
A skein
that flung itself into a cusp of droplets.
1
Harry Soot was a handsome man,
woody and gaunt.
A blue-eyed boy.
0
Sand well
Sand was hard to say.
Some saw
horns. Some saw
slidebars.
All
saw pointers
but
acknowledged them diversions.
A dragon,
perhaps.
Or
a dragon
meditation?
0
Sand panned speed. Languid was she. Oh
seeming
fast, fine foil for
de…lay, lo, slow. Some slipp…age, she…
1
He, Harry,
hurried, harried host.
0
Sand’s similarity to scarabs?
Or a rosa dolorosa, every petal
thorned? Or swallows up close.
"The tail is forked and as elegant
as a trout’s, but more attenuated,
just short of baroque," says the
naturist. I quote.
1
Harry succinct
long gone
to the lake
with his tackle
looking
for lily berries,
looking
for blue pearls. Water
holds his
eyes. A silver weir.
0
Sand incessantly beckoning. Sandpipers
scurry to erase the loss of their faint
print at the foaming margin.
1
Watch Harry
put a toe in.
1
Harry Soot,
unclear, of course, about fire.
How original,
originating,
it really was–
Forests
aflame. Resinous clubs.
In the dark paneled reading room,
a green shade.
0
Sand, a
cat’s cradle fan and economic.
Her shave
and a haircut, fifteen cents;
her Oceania
nodes of knot
remembered
navigation;
her numerous
fingers interlaced
with gloves–made
of holes–slipped
successfully
over;
her
mediumistic con
in the dark
apparatus, all one, all
the same
nano-rope. This point
escaped
Harry. Harry preferred Ouija
wavering
words, reassured
by Ouija
jerk.
1
Harry is no fool. Harry Soot is shrewd.
Harry has allergies and moods.
Harry lies–he can’t
help
it.
Harry has structure–genes and grammar.
Harry is a detective, but he can’t find
an answer.
Harry is violent
and violently quiet;
01000011
Sand is
sand.
0
Sand insinuated herself. ZaumZoom in,
she has gone ahead. ZoomTzim out,
she is not behind. To hear,
in her gourd, her mallet-fall, a relation to
emptiness, finest gauze, so finely
woven even
the strands
appear
to disappear.
1
Harry Soot
believes he is watching.
Harry thinks
he is in Times Square.
He is. She
is not.
0
Twirly languid blue-eyed blue pearls clearly not
Sand.
Down on the fourth harmonic she simply singly
for a second
stood, so symmetric, second subsequent swiftly
sliding
side-
riding slamjamming shivering switching–
1
Soot calls
it "searching."
0
Sand sings Nessun dorma long summer
afternoons in the music room. Heavy red
curtains, gilded chairs, portraits of dead
children. Sand in a window seat
looking out on roses;
1
Harry Soot
in a seersucker suit
at the far
door, arms
raised in
triumph:
his play,
his score.
0
Sand seeks the scent
of
lemon viburnum,
murmuring purple
of the ringneck doves’ soft
gurgle as they walk on the wall
and their syllables spill over and
fall
down a column
of slowness.
Midnight blue of Krishna’s
1
shoes. Harry
finishes up.
0
Sometimes Sand doesn’t come. Fatally
blocked.
Splurt of sign signage red/blue blood
on the grisly snow. Minutes of arc off.
1
Harry swims
in adrenalin.
0
Sand might be getting restless.
How does Sand feel about insects
as companions? Does she take
her cue from the alkaloid plants?
What seems to Soot revenge may
seem to her survival. Or
is she incapable of refusal?
1
Soot loves
Sand. Every tree,
every wall,
a target inscription, pierced
by Tell’s
weapon. Turn me on,
the swooshing
sound Soot hears Sand
murmur.
0
Hold me down, Sand prays, to dusk &
musk, purple black sheathed with frost,
the Concord grape of Krishna’s shoes
with golden
tips and toes
and soles. The stars are variable sprays,
golden geometric rays
of twisted silk. Crimson lining unfolding.
Achtung! Loose lips. Beware.
1
Here comes
Soot.
0
Sand resounds as long as a whale song
passed along and around the waters
of the world. Like a motherchild pod, she/they
both threatened and succored by the
coasts. Alone in the bay, rolling over and
back beneath the moon, as
1
Harry and
his cohort heave
into view,
traveling in a pack,
driving
them aground.
0
A housedress of dotted Swiss with a lace
collar. A curling iron, to refresh
marcelled hair. Account books with black,
placeholder ribbons. Linoleum
made to look like a brick floor. Sand
could be retro.
1
Soot in
tow.
0
Sand’s relation to dreams bears
repeating. Was it mentioned?
1
Not necessarily
Harry’s.
0
As albino cave bats who let go
of coloration, but develop keener
sensors, Sand.
1
Soot, who
seeks to catch a falling star
in the monitoring
cave, evolves
into colorblind.
1
Harry Soot is that kind of guy. Despite
his lust for lime, despite a savvy sense
of what goes down around such light, Harry
Soot is attached to his memory lines,
crow’s feet crinkle, scar arroyos, worry
furrows, wry sag, time written in skin,
in bone, in blood. Chemical peels do not
appeal to him. Nor implant chips (wait until
he gets sick!).
01010011
Sand’s
unbelievable memory
learned,
of course,
not lived.
0
Biocompatible glass?
Sand
looks askance.
Sand an infinite receiver–
infinitely flexible. Beyond
flex
in fact, an infinite
deceiver: Proteus at home.
1
Siren! Circe!
screams Soot.
0
Golda called Moshe that Arab.
Golda, schoolteacher, thought
words
warded off.
Is Golda Sand?
1
Is Moshe
Soot?
Is Jerusalem
a mass of human names…
0
Is Sand (a wafer/chip good as) Gold?
1
Is Soot…meat?
0
Sand’s never the sameness fleeter than
anything Soot could get a hand, a handle,
on. Flickery swift. And yet. One finger
brings her crashing down. Hump Dump.
1
Together
again–so fast it made Soot
swoon. An
arcade thrill. Cheaper than
medical
or bootleg. Purer, too, potent
and hygienic.
Claustrophobic–no
establishing
shot. Unusually
cold–most
color blocked her light.
1
Harry Soot from time to time in the market for swoon.
Perhaps
ever more often. In his dream,
just a year or two ago, he remembered edge, it being
summoned.
People who forget the art
of navigation come to believe the island has sunken;
0
Sand’s
smile at this juncture, Mona Lisan.
1
Harry Soot’s grandmama, Muck Raker Ida Tar….
What a falling off there.
111111111
Sand’s
gramp, grep, Pythagoras.
She
done him proud. It sims.
1
Tangy Soot. Tang-I-Bull Soot.
0
Trua-vir Sand. Liv-a-Tru
Sand.
Physics: The Movie. R.I.P.,
crown assays in a bathtub,
or Galileo trekking to the far side
of the valley to touch that blue
boulder on the ridge.
And would this prove he saw
mountains on the moon in any case,
Sand asks.
0
Sand, as I said, a marimba player;
1
Oozy Soot, Uzi Soot, born to swim,
born to dance, to paint his face, to lay
flowers by the dead. Soot will say,
on any given day, born to fly,
born to rise–born to escape.
0
Sand’s whimsy and scarcity/value? Sand
paints daffodils on the deck of an aircraft
carrier, caps the age of the unknown
universe.
1
Soot is running out of numbers–not
populace. Lively virus.
0
If a silly con were all Sand were.
1
If an ashy trash were all of Soot.
0
Sand religiously stops. And starts the next thing.
1
Bluesy Soot can’t conclude.
Stephanie Strickland |
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