Jody's Notes
A bunch of different images, years apart, suddenly cooking together into something that I didn't expect, didn't see coming, don't (even now) know how to put into other words. To explain it, I mean.
I republished this poem in my collection The Lust for Blueprints.
I hold the seashell in my hand
and practice nostalgia. What better
object to tell secrets to: “I
loved her,” I tell it. Then
I cup it to my ear, and
like a bat, listen for an echo.
Narcissism breeds disappointment
in this context at least.
The thing is bone-dry, and yet
the ghost of an evaporated sea
yells my way. Tonight, alone
in my bed, I will dream
that I spread my black wings
like an insect while the dawn
cracks open the ebony egg of night
neatly along the horizon.
© 1999, 2001 Jody Azzouni