levelheaded: Desafiar

Nearly free of punctuation, Danniel Schoonebeek’s “Desafiar” has the giddy, nervous energy of a teenager in love. The speaker leaps from one sentence to the next, praising his beloved and pleading for her acceptance.

From the outset, this seemingly positive poem bears a subtly negative undercurrent, as evidenced by the phrase, “Lisa don’t disallow me.” Yet, Schoonebeek’s choice of “don’t disallow” rather than “allow,” injects the line with an air of inevitability. Based on this phrasing, the two are meant to be together.

As readers, we assume that an infinitive verb will follow this opening phrase. Our anticipation builds as our eyes travel the blank line separating the first two stanzas, only to be undercut by the fact that no infinitive appears. The plea then is not for Lisa to grant our speaker permission to do something, but instead is a request for him to be allowed to be something—himself.  The implication here is that it is only possible for the speaker to be himself if the couple is united.

This union, however, does not come without its difficulties. Our speaker is someone who “already / loves[s] running // my fingers over your gold / ring & lashes.” The break after “love running” implies that the speaker may be fearful of commitment. Any symbolism implied by “your gold / ring” is complicated by the fact that we don’t know who gave Lisa the ring. While the noun lashes refers to the delicate hairs on the beloved’s eyelid, the verb form of the word in undeniably violent—the gold ring perhaps serving as a vehicle for pain. Destruction works its way into the poem in several other places as well,  through words like “hazarding,” “problem,” “trouble,” “tense,” “rampage,” “busted,” and “death.”

What all of these words do though is contextualize the joyous celebration of new love. Close examination of Schoonebeek’s diction reveals the poem’s depth, but on a first read, what makes the poem so successful is its simplicity. A man revels in his new found feelings and we revel with him.  In the face of the negativity that creeps into the first line and any other lines that follow, this is a poem about “say[ing] yes.” The speaker wants love to be allowed to bloom.  He wants to be allowed to bloom. The poem itself, as a reflection of this desire, feels equally organic. The poem didn’t happen, it happens. For the speaker of “Desafiar,” reciprocated love is akin to poem-making, a process of composition that “composes me.”

– The Editors