THE COMPETITION
Blog post description.
POETRY
The ABC’s of Extremities: Hypochondriacs Should Not Read
abducted, arthritic
awkward, brittle, broken
bunions, chappy, chilly
clumsy, cold, compressed
congested, constricted
convulsing, cracked, cramped
crippled, cured
discolored, dislocated
displaced, distorted, dry
emaciated, enlarged
erupted, extended, flexed
fluttering
floating
fornicated, fractured
freezing, fuzzy
gurgling, hairy, hard
hot, heavy, inflamed
injured, insensible
irritated, itching
jerking, knocked, karma
limping, loose, lump
leg, milk, missing
numbness, oozing, pain
paralysis, perspiration, pricking
pulsation, raised, relaxed
restless, sensitive, shaking
shocked, shriveled, shuddering
sinking, stiff, swollen
tender, tense, tight,
tingling, trembling, twitching
tumors, ulcers, veins
warts, wasting, weakness
withered wooden wrinkles.
The Competition
Silence amplifies
sound in the quiet of the night.
I re-read the poetry of my great love
astonished to find nothing of myself
in his collective works.
There is no question he exceeds me
in the artifice of language.
His words sparkle as they race from sentence
to sentence
stanza to stanza
page to page
but the sense eludes me once again
and I’m no longer 20 but 74.
Older, but still beautiful under folds
and creases.
Still missing something, still wondering
why I was so unimportant
why everything was erased.
I was completely erased.
Half-Life
It is that night again
I missed it … the longest one
slowly infecting the holiday season.
The dark envelopes me with velvet arms
my time is almost gone.
My half life recedes
and moves towards whatever is coming
with lightning speed.
What is half life but a precursor
of the next time begins after the end.
Humans are so finite with their beginnings
and endings.
We cannot seem to understand the illusion of time.
The wood stove softly roars
while the silence sings.
Billie Jean Stratton is a 74-year-old farm girl who never liked the barn. In the 1980’s, she worked with John Montague at The New York State Writers Institute and met Joseph Brodsky when he first came to America. Among many other notable publications, Billie’s poem “Brodsky” was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
