Verse Wisconsin 105| Janann Dawkins

Two Poems

Two Years Since the Bloodletting

Place your hand in mine. Your touch feels like paper inflamed. In our bathtub
my hand swims the way fish slant toward the light in some shallow spill, up
like iron into blood. The freedom near your lips slopes straight, like
mine would, only I want it worse. “I’ll suck your pipe down.”

Yeah, that place. That way. The iron in the mine
rings like red paper. Dragonfly slant. Red rapier. I’m free. Worse,
that flame has sent some strikes. Straight through, run water through my pipe.
Your bathtub or mine? I’m up like your plumbing. I’m down.

place   paper   flame     bathtub
way slant     some     up
iron    free      straight   like
mine   worse    pipe       down

Afterbirth/life

World, you know I was never as prescient
as when I procured my abortifacient.

—Janann Dawkins, Ann Arbor, MI

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Janann Dawkins

Janann Dawkins' work has appeared in publications such as decomP, Existere,Mezzo Cammin, Ouroboros Review & Two Review, among others. Leadfoot Press published her chapbook Micropleasure in 2008. A graduate of Grinnell College with a B.A. in American Studies & twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, she resides in Ann Arbor, MI.

About "Two Years Since the Bloodletting": I invented the matrix poem as a method of exercise so as to combat writer's block. The matrix is composed of sixteen words in a 4x4 table. The words are gathered randomly; my favorite method is to spend two to three minutes catching words from television, radio or ambient conversation. The objective is to utilize each word in order while inserting as few words as possible between each; also, each line must make as much sense as possible. When the anchor word is reached in each line of the table, a new line in the poem must begin immediately. The result is a poem of eight lines.

About "Afterbirth/life": The rhymed couplet is a form I use rather infrequently; in fact, my favorite style of couplets is unrhymed, as that lends more flexibility. However, the rhymed couplet has a deep, rich history of use by satirists & philosophers, so I endeavor to utilize the form when subject matter calls for it.