I really admire two small features of “Parenthetical,” the first being the influence of color. Usually, when a poem doesn’t explicitly state specific colors, I imagine my own colors into and for the scene, but in Jordan’s poem, the colors white and red receive notice, as does darkness, smoke, and a streetlamp. This minute inclusion forced me to imagine the poem in black and white with random red, grey, and pale orange. The scenery of the poem became very cinematic for me, but I enjoyed this restriction of colors, even if it was only in my head. The restriction of colors leads me to the other facet of the poem that I admire, the imprisonment of the speaker between the club and window across the street. As a reader, I felt imprisoned by specific colors and scenes, but the speaker also feels this same oppression between the club and window, silence and deafening noise, memory and the present. Though all poems require certain specificity, the limited scenery of “Parenthetical” really made the poem for me. I felt as claustrophobic as the speaker. I never would have expected a few colors and limit of two scenes to perform like this.
Language Mixology Half brother of the same halves, simulacra is fancy for “absent.” Like banging means “good” or off the chain means “good.” The same way off the hook forgets the phone, I’m forgetting the space between Oregon and North Carolizzay, daylight savings time and the addition of the “-izzay.” So silly that suffix, verbed blackface for black folks. ----------------------------------- Halfrican Brothers Keep Trying To Out Do Me Halfrican brothers keep trying to out do me, Blending their jaw line blackface. “Does that make you feel more black?” I’d say yes, if I knew that “black” Wasn’t the absence of white, The refusal to speak the King’s English. I’m remembering that black points, Though hard to come by, make all the difference Between grape drink and some opposite, Pants on the ground and some opposite, For non black folks.
Comments