Winning the Toss
Winning the Toss
By Saloni Kaul
The head's up there in all-time honoured milieu
But on the tail's side loud distinct as the cry of the curlew
Is the ultimate statement, the coin's value.
Filtering by Category: Poetry
Startled as Springboard
Startled as Springboard
By Saloni Kaul
A glass walled chapel so unique in rock and wood,
Deft latticed skeleton leaps into tree-branched sky,
Aspiring in forest-screened tongued darkness high
Like long forgotten promises, forgotten good.
How long have you sighed there, how long there stood?
We stumble tearing on you in transfixed delight --
Delight of lovers longing to be somewhere lost --
Yet signs of former civilization sparked at what cost,
All that dart leaping dancing stained glass light
Stirs deeply us as boisterous wind the night.
Even this Bonaparte Gull's exploratory
Mild acrobatics veering in bring smiles in face of fright,
As lonely your thawed lofty look of might
All miracles converges for all to see laudatory;
E pluribus unum* , one from many's conciliatory.
(*out of plurality, oneness)
These Pennsylvania hills still sing your hymns,
Recorded, saved by every nourished bird and tree
Afloat on blue tract meadowed lea;
We take your leave as slow the red waning light dims,
All o'er the open muskeg by woodland lakes' rims.
Minuet in a Teacup
Minuet in a Teacup
By Saloni Kaul
A sail out at sea
Repetitively careens,
A face in storm stares
And makes as though about to intervene.
The sail its love of sea declares,
The face of storm proposes a fee ;
Poses its dares ; offers to share;
Resolute, Sail in the know resists, dare contravenes.
The difference between
The sea and stormy sea
Is light cold or hot air.
Monday Morning
Lying in bed
on a Monday morning
I watch my wife towel off
after showering and think
why can’t I be that towel
rolling over her knolls
basking in her garden
rather than rising
and going to work.
It's not for the Usher to Ask
Many churches today
have a food pantry that never
had a pantry before.
I attend a church like that.
Some folks are well-fixed,
others poor, most betwixt.
Some had money before
but not enough now to pay
the mortgage and then buy food
so the pantry helps them
the same way it helps clients
it has helped for years.
Some folks in the pews quietly
support the pantry with
checks and canned goods
enabling the nouveau poor
to stand in line with the
forever poor on Mondays.
A neighborhood baker slips
into the church Sunday mornings
just prior to the end of service
and quietly stacks his trays
of unsold bread in the dark foyer.
He says nothing and disappears.
No one seems to know
who he is but the hungry
love his bread and word
of its excellence has reached
the woman who leaves church early
and always grabs two loaves
of French baguettes and is
out in the parking lot long
before anyone else and
drives off in a red Mercedes.
Perhaps she’s on unemployment,
low on food stamps or is still
making payments on the car.
It’s not for the usher to ask.
I simply hold the door.
Aspect of Error
Crying, again.
This time not because the cardboard statues of Osama line the desert
not because that night-time ghost no longer comes to visit
and not because my sadness of Saddam Hussein came
the moment of his capture and again.
Not this time.
My youth and love have slipped away
in my dreams marked dead on a tree
x’s in black tape kept in place with hunting knives for all to see
He gave me black gloves with rhinestone clips
given as a token, a “Please wear…
for me.”
I had to ask
in my sorry state of confidence and confusion,
“Do you want me?
Am I sexy?”
Honest came the answer
as always into my eyes
only this time, his weren’t all there
this time, he didn’t want to see the pain he knew it would cause
afraid I might crush him with the weight.
She’d called me mum
knowing the slap would sting beyond that of anger
that phrase marking her territory, like dogs piss
her body slinking, slithering, close enough
claiming her spot without a doubt,
as I would have
Once upon a time
I had a lover.
He would have dropped everything for me.
— Michelle PG Richardson (Frieda Babbley)
Author Commentary:
Poem Subject Analysis
A woman in her thirties becomes wary of her age. If she hasn't had children yet, she begins to realize that her child bearing years are running out, aspect of error is running high. If she has had children, she begins to realize that there is another part of life coming up that she is not prepared for emotionally.
Socially, we women are trained to be young, and then the training ends. Stemming from all of this is the question of sexual prowess, the ability or inability to attract men for sexual purposes. Bottom line, she wants to know if she's still got it or not.
The woman narrator in this poem thought she did still have it. She'd counted on having the ability to keep any lover she wanted, one in particular, forever; or at least longer than now. She realizes her aspect of error is higher than she could have ever imagined. It is not only one of the most difficult things she has had to go through, but it is even more devastating than anything in the political world that moved her to sadness or remorse. She has been on top, a leader, and now she has been captured, persecuted for her declining age. How she finds out is perhaps the biggest slap in the face, one that will sting for quite some time. The warning signs accumulate in slow motion in this dream like scene, until her imminent rejection is realized and understood by her, despite anything she could say.
Poem Structure
"Aspect of Error" is written in free verse. While formed with stanzas, the stanzas hold no conservative form. The reason for the use of stanzas in this free verse poem is to separate moments of thought and action, as well as to provide the reader with the knowledge that there should be a longer pause held in its reading at the stanza end point.
As for punctuation, that which is used here is limited, and serves, for the most part, to separate either a moment within a moment, or as a pause in the narrators thought or telling of the story. Punctuation always works here as a sign to the reader that a longer pause is to be held between words, lines, or stanzas than would naturally come. Capitalization at the beginning of each stanza remains uniform both for visual uniformity as well as to mark the beginning of each with importance.