Sign-Inventory 1, Week 6

Laura Kasischke's "Barney" (Writing Poetry, pp. 182-83):

- I love you. You love me.

He is the true Zero in his cap & bells, in the terrible
lizard of his skin.  I see him

crossing the tundra in snowshoes like a big
hug coming, lost

on Earth
in a body.  Consider: if I become him

what kind of suffering?  This
afflicted creature, dancing

for the hostile, costumed.  Venus

loves him.  He loves me, has given

himself to the whole world without
mortification, given
himself to the landscape

of sap and snow and cloud, come

unto the world
and made it pregnant, singing
to the invisible family before him, swallowing
the sorrow of children--innocent, curious, extinct.
A narrow stream of tears runs right through him.

When the beloved
is in everyone, in the excited
imbecile, the timid
orgy of sleep, who
can help but think of Christ
with his sandals & lambs?  Why

all of us?  Why not just some?  Oh
the emptiness of so much.  The everlastingness.  This
hug.  Quivering, endured.  A purple
balloon like our hearts, naked
and blown up

without flesh, wrinkles, fur.  It loves
without an object of it, and how
we long to keep

the beast of it
stuffed down inside us

along with the little saints & fools
who sing pitiful songs in our chests.

• Line 1:  ampersand in place of "and"; "Zero" capitalized
• Lines 5-6:  first line, two syllables; next line, three syllables before period, followed with two syllables between period and colon
• Lines 1-18 use enjambment; line 19 is the first instance of the contrary
• Line 7:  question can be asked without line 6--it begins with "what" and ends in the same line
• Lines 9-10:  allusion to Venus, Roman goddess of love, beauty, and fertility
• Line 10:  reptition of the word "loves"
• Lines 24-25:  allusion to Christ
• Line 26:  the word "all" is italicized
• Line 36:  ampersand used again to replace "and"
• First four stanzas are two lines each; the following two stanzas are one line each; stanza seven is three lines; the next is one line long; all following stanzas are at least three lines long, except for the final two, which are two lines each (just like the first stanzas of the poem)