You’re It, Tag
Spray paint can store record
through mural, stalk stray words,
maul syntax’s small talk. Cat claws,
slaw-like shred. Gag reflex caws
a few bars of sun glare. Sure as bird
and bee speech bumble, hybrid
of fight and flight. Our little level-
headed acquaintance shovels
drinkers’ car keys into his rucksack,
together we declared amphibrach.
I threaded baubles on string theory,
amongst rusted tools shed allergy
tears. I came to harangue sorrow,
tell Faberge tales, wear my toe
tag like a friendship ring. Bottom rung
seemed like a nice spot to hang.
If duck operation, then new goose.
Untagged wall, indecorous use.
The machines sprayed on faces,
stripped self from our carapaces.
Led to big sleep, dead man walked chary.
Achilles heels locked in our diaries.
Stephen Danos |
levelheaded: You’re It, Tag
Stephen Danos’ “You’re It, Tag” is an electric vote for lingual communication, even if the poem ends up disheartened by others’ turnout. Jam-packed words and sounds perform deft acrobatics (go ahead, read it aloud). Alone, this showmanship usually isn’t substantial enough to earn a poem its wings, but here it reinforces the speaker’s staunch concern with language.
He wants us to listen closely. Here are three moments that require deep attention:
1) Every two lines there is a near-rhyme at the end, subtle enough that we wait for it without the distraction of fully knowing we’re waiting.
2) He chooses words and phrases that can act as either noun or verb (“Spray paint can store record,” “Cat claws,” “bumble”), coaxing us to take off our coats, stay a while. This almost cross-sensory experience grows when “Gag reflex caws / a few bars of sun glare.” Noise made visible. If we could see the world from this guy’s perspective, it would swirl with synesthesia like this. Words can move, taste, smell and interact with each other, with him and us. They transcend everyday life.
3) A nod to the art of poetry: “together we declared amphibrach”—which is when a three-syllable word is emphasized only on the middle syllable—and, impressively, “together” itself is an amphibrach, as is “acquaintance”!
By now, we’re probably all convinced of the speaker’s joy and urgency in language. Now for the poem’s more beastly population. Cats, birds, bees, ducks, geese sandwich the speaker, and hints of the animal move throughout: “stalk stray,” “maul,” “big sleep.” Animals are capable of many phenomena, but they have yet to speak. Their presence here is ominous. The speaker’s sorrow and metaphorical death—“my toe tag”—seem to result from being surrounded by a lack of communication (the animals; the “Untagged wall”; the machines perhaps painting over graffiti, effectively killing “self”).
In the end, no one risks intimacy. We’ve locked in our private diaries our “Achilles heels,” our most vulnerable spots.
– The Editors