Discourse on Form

In the darkness of the hive
____sight
is useless--dozens of other bees
crawl across the dancer's body

[an image already itself
_a cliche]

to feed
and taste her: "dissolve with a few drops
whatever excludes"* -- gluttony
____without aim:

and bite off this last
___touching of death--plenus poderes.
The foot, the foot
is not yet a foot, it's the wing
of a Paleolithic bird and before that
___a marvelous manifesto.
Brava and all that. And on the matter of form:
Will you take tea? and In long nights
I dread most and The lepers of Madurai--
and it's all such a jumble, and o, for a moment
not to think, to be
___at the center
___of this marvelous stillness
___can you hear it--?
___no sound

*Rilke, The Sonnets to Orpheus

___ -- Claudia Grinnell



Claudia Grinnell was born and raised in Germany. She now makes her home in Louisiana, where she teaches English at University of Louisiana at Monroe. Her poems have appeared in numerous print and ezines, such as New Orleans Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, Bottomfish, Recursive Angel, and Exquisite Corpse. Most recently, she won the Southern Women Writers Conference Emerging Writers Poetry Award.