In which Your Humble Blogger returns to working in syllables, this time trying to tell a story by pulling together sights and occurrences from various places she's been:
"Do Not Disturb"
Not long ago, in March, two cracked men tried
To rape a twelve-year-old girl in the lot
Of Sonny's All-Night Store. It's summer now,
And kids leave the store chugging cold soda.
The young ones make up rules for chalk circles
They draw on the sidewalk where she stumbled;
The older ones -- not much older, her age --
Escape into illogical music.
The gnats are sitting in my vision. Shut
The door, and draw the drapes against the blinds.
Insects continue to defy the screen.
I can't forget at my age. Every year,
It's the same. And I want no part of it.
* * *
The neighborhood in this story doesn't exist; it's a hybrid of places that I've lived in and passed through. Having just typed this one up (and looked at it for the first time in a long time), I can already see that, with some changes, it might be worth keeping. I like the atmosphere established in the first part, before the narrator starts talking about herself, but I think I'd like to redo the second part and working on tying the narrator more to what she sees. Funny, because I remember this poem actually starting with the second part, specifically with the bugs flying into a home through the window screen. That was happening here at the time!
What do you folks think?
I agree with you Sheila, there's just a slight disconnect between the two parts; almost as if it needs a bridge of some type in the middle to connect the the observation to the observer. Both parts, however, are pretty darn near brilliant... just sayin'...
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