Poetry: "Henriette" and "Discards"

Henriette and Discards

Blake Traylor, Class of 2023

Henriette,

I know you took notes in class, I have them

In front of me, but would you please explain

Your script for me — your handwriting runs

Smooth but I cannot read what you said

To yourself, what you mouthed or muttered or cried

To yourself, as you penciled to death

The margins left by “The Hollow Men”

(You had nothing to say of “The Wasteland”?)

Scoring and checking all “dry”-ness, “without”-s

I can read your numbers: “1925” to mark

The corner where “the world ends”

Whimpering

Before any poem, red pen to carve

A bloated biography — Eliot couldn’t have been more

Loved by this editor — then the evidence

Of a mishap with coffee at right of

A “Love Song,” stains just barely spilling

In windowpanes and hapless reversals

(stains that stay and stay and fade)

More writing, “Ash Wednesday,” then nothing but

A line dragged wavering down between

The two n’s in the “inner” at the end of a line.

The rest you left blank.

philomel(a)

you are not the person

i thought, for a moment, you were

eyes rolling over the green to

address the little crumpledness behind

the door where he sleeps

waking: my amphetamine

day, braving the softest earth

and taking the smell of petroleum

truffles, darkest chocolate, in black

bags where they bury the little

plump balls of lint from the dryer

—Don’t know what that is.

—Don’t care to know, either.