Jody's Notes
I'll admit it. Just as failing to publish a poem doesn't convince me there's something wrong with a poem--not even failing to publish it for decades does that--so too succeeding in publishing a poem doesn't convince me the poem works. I worry about this poem (I admit it): I worry about "Photon," in particular, that "Photon" doesn't work. Let alone "Ink," "Shroud," "Shadow." (I'm not claiming the poem doesn't work; I'm noting that I'm sometimes in the dark about these things. No matter how much time passes.) Admittedly, the success or failure of poems are synergestic matters; it's not single words that sink poems, not really, it's not even single lines.
I reprinted the poem in The Lust for Blueprints.
Only three-headed Ozone
guards us against Photon’s
rage; even muscular Night wears
startling Photon under his skin; the
worshipful Moon
glows in her blanket of cloud.
She sleeps with Photon.
And those of us who kill
Photon, who feed his
Multicolored blood to Ink,
to Shroud, to Shadow
we have no grey
to console us.
© 1998, 2001 Jody Azzouni