Verse Wisconsin 105| David Sklar

When we make love
you call my name;
it hurts to hear
the name you say—
it sounds so broken,
sounds so strange
when we make love.

When we make love
you call my name.
It sounds so broken,
sounds so strange.
Why must I even
have a name
when we make love?

When we make love
you call my name.
Why must I even
have a name?
I'd rather not know
who I am
when I make love to you.

—David Sklar, Carlstadt, NJ

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David Sklar

David Sklar’s publications include poetry in Wormwood Review, Paterson Literary Review, and Bull Spec; short fiction in such publications as Strange Horizons, Cabinet des Fees, and Triangulation: End of the Rainbow; and the short novel Shadow of the Antlered Bird from Drollerie Press. He is currently coediting the Drollerie Press anthology Trafficking in Magic/Magicking in Traffic.

This, to me, is like a pantoum—but not. The first couplet and the last line are repeated each time, and the second couplet is moved up from the previous verse's third couplet, which is new with each verse—all in heavily rhythmic iambic bimeter. The tight rhythm and repetition move the poem ever forward, while the new lines—and the movement of the old lines—sheds an ever-changing light on the repeated words.