Kennebunkport, Maine

 

Smelling,

decaying fish and low tide

never bothered me

in late August

the way it did

mid July.

 

The attic bookstore

was worth it.

I never understood

how the eight foot tall

candle by the door,

refused to engulf the building.

 

I guess it had respect

for literature.

 

Sometimes I think of

the rotting wedding cake

Miss Havisham sat next to.

 

This must be what it looked like.

 

A mass of ivory melting

only to harden again

stale.

 

The barely insolated,

wooden, walls looked

as if they were torn

out of a Bible.

The scripture holding

everything together.

 

My grandma said, when

the sea air grays

the wooden planks, they

just flip them over.

 

No one could

tell me what happened

when both sides went

gray.

 

I’m going gray.

White actually,

same as the pages

in every journal

I buy when I come here.

 

Twelve and counting. 

 

 

Reviews

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WOW. I love absolutely EVERYTHING about this. The choppiness of your stanzas works great and I love how you referred to Great Expectations. With that reference alone you bring out a lonliness that only Miss Havisham could muster up. All the different thoughts that go on in this are great because this is how I think about things everyday. Everywhere I go I am thinking at least five different things at once and sometimes they have to do with eachother and sometimes the thoughts have nothing in common. But it's perfect. It's as if you thought these things and as you thought them a little typewriter inside of your brain plunked it out and then printed it off.

I've wanted one of those for a long time...I think so rapidly I can't get it all out fast enough.



Anyway, this is exactly what I'm looking for in my contest and you have got it right on. Amazing work.

[Lindsay Lukens]

I really enjoyed this poem. The imagry was quite nice and rather vivid. I'm a sucker for stanzas, and the influidity of yours is quite pleasing in the way early Beck or Bright Eyes is pleasing. This was lovely.