Locate me
Right away, Stray takes me off the path, but it is a sure-footed departure into thickets that caress. And if they also sting, it is a sting that sends a welcome psychoactive throb into my veins.
Along this meandering way, there is a contrast, or intertwining, of styles. On the one hand, I am led into Burroughsian or Beefheartesque language tableaus
My pollywogs grow legs, hop into backyard pool filters and only need me to resent where they came from.
staring wild-eyed at the confounding flora and fauna. On the other hand, pensive vignettes take me into valleys of memory, chambers of relationship, intimacy.
The forest is not for us, though we talk trees till we stop remembering.
Wise and tender insights also come up along the way
Those of us who dwell on the mysteries of our dead wedge our bodies into the foundations.
Occasionally I encounter a word or metaphor that just didn’t compute, but I press on, pleased anyhow to have experienced this foreign but fascinating phenomenon, to have been lured off the path into this surreal landscape.
The will to explicate subtle, rarely captured vagaries of mood and relationship splashes out into a phrasing. That phrasing, though psychedelic and incongruous:
Say horses and my hands fill with hay, I’m at the fence hoping for affection.
evokes a smile and a nod of assent. Other times the imagery evokes perplexity, the poetic event feeling distant, too personal to penetrate. Yet the diction and mystery of the poem’s expression still seduce. I am happy to be taken even further from the main thoroughfare, to the next line, stanza, poem.
I find myself caught up, wanting to extend the enchanted song of several, even all, of the poems, dwell on them, distill more pith and imagery with them, arm in arm.
Stray
Allison LaSorda
Icehouse Poetry
