Inspired Art Journal
The two poems below were featured in the University of Minnesota Crookston's Inspired Art Journal, Issue 10, released April 2023
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The first poem is called "Light" and is a ghazal. A ghazal is a formal poem constructed with five or more couplets (a couplet is a two-lined stanza within a poem). The format of a ghazal contains a rhyme or repeated refrain. The first couplet contains the rhyme or repeated refrain at the end of both lines. For every stanza after; however, the refrain is only repeated at the end of the second line.
Ghazals often deal with topics of romantic love and express the pain of loss or separation from the beloved and the beauty of love in spite of that pain.
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The other poem is called "Overtaken" and is a sestina poem. A sestina is a formal poem that is quite complex. It is constructed of thirty-nine lines and features the intricate repetition of end-words in six stanzas and an envoi.
There are many themes to a sestina; this one depicts a moment in time marked by new sensations that have overtaken a woman in love.
Light
I felt lighter the day I said I was leaving,
I couldn’t face it before, but this time, leaving.
Morning came fast. The clock was loud.
Its final chime told me, time to be leaving.
My work here is done, I can feel it now.
I look towards the sun, though it feels like a crime. Leaving.
I should be sadder, but no one knows this feeling.
I want to be on my own, ready to soar and shine, leaving.
18 years brought good times, but heavy ones too.
They all thought we were perfect, but like me, that paradigm’s leaving.
I know the lows will come, yet I look towards the light.
Some days I’ll bloom, some days I’ll wilt, like Wild Thyme leaving.
Overtaken
I’m consumed by his love, but it makes sense,
this I now see.
He’s the things I hear,
the things I smell,
the things I taste,
the things I simply touch.
Especially the things I touch.
I feel him in everything, awakening every sense.
He’s like a certain taste
in my mouth, see,
and all things remind me of him, especially a woody, oak smell.
Even listening to a song, every lyric is him. Yes, I can easily hear.
I love him and I want you to hear
me say it. I long for the touch
of his fingers sliding down my back. He breathes in my smell
and no longer am I a woman of sense.
I can simply see
the shape of his body, the sight of his lips and I’d do anything for a taste.
A bottle of red wine gets passed back and forth, each getting a taste,
while we stand outside in complete silence, nothing to hear.
The sky is clear, the stars are bright. I can see
his eyes looking into mine; my hand goes to his cheek for a touch.
Like we always say, the two of us just make sense.
I lean in for a hug, God, it drives me mad, that smell.
He leaves me with his white t-shirt, so I can go to bed and smell
him and his day still on it. I kiss it for one last taste
as I lay in bed alone, trying to make sense
of it all for the hundredth time. I hear
it when he says he loves me, but I’m a bit out of touch
with emotions like this, though he’s made me now see.
In fact, I can easily see.
Everything is so new and clear, like that fresh rain smell,
its shower drops I just want to touch.
The organic taste,
it’s him, it’s us, the easy sound of it all, I want to hear
it for the rest of my life. He is my sixth sense.
Yes, he and I were destined in every sense. It’s him I see
when I look to the future, hear me when I say this. To smell,
to feel, to taste, to feel alive again, it’s worth it. He’s overtaken me with just one touch.