Michelle Detorie's intriguing deployment of hypertext for her poems--a series written during National Poetry Month 2007 called "BellumLetters"--enables her work to attain a level of simultaneity. At the risk of reading too literally, a poem such as "birdbox" is, on the one hand, a poem about a birdhouse, and, given the hypertext links, suddenly a poem about a missile... To read the hypertext versions, go here.
birdbox
1.
no arrival, only the construct
a tethered thing, a lid
to lift
2.
wood from the sea
where birds are made
wood box
the saw
through
white tail
tip
blade feather
box of knives
box of beds
3.
thermometer for blood making
syringe, feeder
drained and piled
faceless wings
shaped to slip, flesh grip
soft and bone
glass on stone
tip red tip
knock on bone
without breath
________
outside, too
a life stretch
brown and moving
eye, wing stitch
the missing sound
boxless
_________________
4.
sad neck, deflated
unfrozen and soft
homeless, three
sisters
missing home
tapered tail to tip
unlidded
without flight
Labels: bellumletters, iraq, links, napowrimo, poem, protest, war
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