Poetic Suture II

Poetic gestures are soothing.
I’ve worn small pins of flowers, invisible to everyone but me. And the times I’ve done this, I’ve imagined I’m carrying a secret garden. So I feel magic seep into my life.
But this feeling of magic, I’ve discovered, hinges on a very particular activity. The dramatics have to be in place: a small whisper, to call someone into confidence. The secret gesture of revealing an inner fold in my sleeve, “look, a flower I planted this morning…”

On one hand poetic gestures re-affirm my power to create meaning—meaning that I can carry all by myself. This meaning doesn’t rely on its being shared with others, it’s a form of poetry that I can offer myself. But when I offer myself the image of a strange miniature garden growing in the hidden seems of my clothes, I have to think of myself as another person, I have to see myself from an external position, in order to get the desired effect… the soothing warmth of being anchored in poetry.

Poetic Suture I

There are moments in my life that reference myth, but the reference rarely emerges naturally.
(I’ll use the word myth broadly, to talk about the poetic, metaphorical, allegorical, visual, melodramatic, archetypal, etc.)
Every story I write has at least one moment: someone drops a trail of dog food behind them (like in Hansel and Gretel), someone feels discomfort because there’s semen on the underside of their mattress (like in the princess and the pea), there are seven men in the house (like in Snow White), the person lying in your bed isn’t who you thought they were (like in the little red ridding hood).
But this is fiction. In real life, when the references to myth aren’t immediately perceived, I think it’s important to highlight them and even to fabricate them.
Every story, every experience can only persist in its telling. I’m coming in on the side of poetry, even if it means sometimes grafting in some metaphorical wolf-valves into the metaphorical heart.