Assaulted and Beaten Senseless by Poetry
Terri Brown-Davidson
The poetic process shifts and suddenly
I’m gazing out a window
at a black-cratered moon that swells and shivers,
observing words, beyond it, accrete and tower
and accrue,
shine so whitely the glare
sinks into my retinas
and I can’t stop reading
the verbiage inching up miles higher than my skull.
“Stasis.” “Inchoate.” “Linguistic.” “Mystery.”
All the language centers in my brain
light up as if flooded with the cheap, stuttering neon
from a fifties drive-in diner
where carhops in red skirts
sing orders of phonemes and syllables
through my car window
though I can’t easily devour them
because I lack a hearty appetite
so simply stare, a dolt beaten up then beaten down
by plethoras of poetic signifiers.
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