Sestina

For my intro to poetry class I was given the chance to write a sestina for extra credit. A sestina is one of the most complex poetic forms... ever. It's composed of six sestets (6 line stanzas) and a tercet (a 3 line stanza.) That's the easy part. Each of the six lines in the stanza end in the same six words. If the first stanza is numbered 123456, then the second stanza is 615243, the third is 364125, the fourth is 532614, the fifth is 451362, and the sixth is 246531. Then the tercet contains all six words, usually with a sort of caesura in the middle after the first word, with the first line containing 1 and 2, the second 3 and 4, and the third 5 and 6. Now, if that isn't difficult enough, we chose as a class the six words we had to use. The words that we came up with (randomly chosen off the tops of our heads) were detergent, sauce, bridge, man, time, and chair. I'll first give the example we read in class, one by Elizabeth Bishop entitled 'Sestina' and then my feeble attempt, which I haven't named.

Sestina

By: Elizabeth Bishop

September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.

She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac,
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to the child,

It's time for tea now; but the child
is watching the teakettle's small hard tears
dance like mad on the hot black stove,
the way the rain must dance on the house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother
hangs up the clever almanac

on its string. Birdlike, the almanac
hovers half open above the child,
hovers above the old grandmother
and her teacup full of dark brown tears.
She shivers and says she thinks the house
feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.

It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
I know what I know, says the almanac.
With crayons the child draws a rigid house
and a winding pathway. Then the child
puts in a man with buttons like tears
and shows it proudly to the grandmother.

But secretly, while the grandmother
busies herself about the stove,
the little moons fall down like tears
from between the pages of the almanac
into the flower bed the child
has carefully placed in the front of the house.

Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.

Bishop's words were, obviously, tears, almanac, grandmother, stove, child, and house. Now for mine. Again, a disclaimer, I make no claims as to the quality of my poetry. If you don't like it, I'm very sorry. Direct thy web browser elsewhere.

Sestina

Caroline Franks

His rolled-up shirtsleeves smell of stale tobacco and fresh detergent

“you make things interestin’” he says… calls it “bringin’ sauce”

The roaring pickup stops, the heat cranks up on the Jackson Bridge

I never felt as wild as that, a girl in the muscled arms of a man.

2 AM, tugging on my dress and he’s laying on the gas, we lost track of time

Sneaking in the back door, the floorboard squeals. Daddy’s in the kitchen chair.

I’ve stood all day- the belt marks smart against the chair

But I can still smell his sweet masculine tobacco-and-detergent

Countin’ the clicking clock above the stove, ticking measured time

Wiping palm sweat on a stained apron, stirring the sauce

Tonight the open window will release me to my man

The road will open back to Jackson Bridge.

Mama’s friends around a table, griping about men and playing bridge

Meaty bulk in faded calico draped over either side of the protesting chair

Daddy’s at Sam’s for the beer, “just like a man…”

Conversation runs to the price hike on detergent

Mrs. Landes compliments me on the sauce

I smile and nod and slip out; escape time.

~~~

Hours creep, drag along. It’s always fighting me, time.

Tonight’s the women’s night for bridge.

He mutters somethin’ when he walks past- already on the sauce.

Creak, creak, creak. Damn creakin’ rockin’ chair.

It smells of mud in here. Mud and detergent.

Gold glints dully on my knotted hand, the last tie to that man.

He’s got a bottle in his fist, just like a man.

The arms that so entranced me as a girl felt the passing time

He smells of sour beer and sweat instead of tobacco and detergent

I was seventeen the last time I saw Jackson Bridge

I knit, I wash, I think, I wish from this creakin’ chair

Still wipin’ palm sweat on an apron, still stirring the sauce.

Sue made the gravy, she makes a mean sauce

But there’s black marks round her arm- married a mean man.

Hefty bulk, a workin woman’s weight on a tired chair

Proof, it could be worse. Could be worse than just my painful wear of time.

Sunday: complainin about men over casserole and a hand of bridge

The feminine mystique- a hovering cloud of scrubbing bleach and cheap detergent

Hands bleached by detergent, burned by a stove of sauce

Women playin bridge, a beer-soaked sleeping man

The eternal creak of time and a worn-out rocking chair.