WOULD SHE LIKE IT
(an ode to Gertrude Stein)
A rose is a rose she said about a rose and sound, that sound, that round sound so soft repeated. A sound repeated to semantic saturation—this is this is this is this—stripped down to a different meaning. So seeming simple a surface sense supposed and that animal feeling below—a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose—the run on. Her voice low, a low drone, the shape of a sentence no longer imposed, a restrained howl of female understanding.
So much refusal.
Let me.
Let me be.
Let me be this.
Let me be unintelligible.
Let me.
Have that instant of knowing. That instant of knowing this. That insistent knowing this. Of knowing this is this. Without question knowing. And no, no patriarchal poetry so pretty and enough. No question of it, it is more than being, than being understood.
It is that.
It is that howl.
That refusal.
That repeat.
That repeated repetition.
That repetition repeated and repeated and unrepentantly repeated.
So the words come out clean.
So the words come out hers.