Hate Poem

Julie Sheehan

I hate you truly. Truly I do.
Everything about me hates everything about you.
The flick of my wrist hates you.
The way I hold my pencil hates you.
The sound made by my tiniest bones were they trapped
in the jaws of a moray eel hates you.
Each corpuscle singing in its capillary hates you.

Look out! Fore! I hate you.

The blue-green jewel of sock lint I’m digging
from under by third toenail, left foot, hates you.
The history of this keychain hates you.
My sigh in the background as you explain relational databases
hates you.
The goldfish of my genius hates you.
My aorta hates you. Also my ancestors.

A closed window is both a closed window and an obvious
symbol of how I hate you.

My voice curt as a hairshirt: hate.
My hesitation when you invite me for a drive: hate.
My pleasant “good morning”: hate.
You know how when I’m sleepy I nuzzle my head
under your arm? Hate.
The whites of my target-eyes articulate hate. My wit
practices it.
My breasts relaxing in their holster from morning
to night hate you.
Layers of hate, a parfait.
Hours after our latest row, brandishing the sharp glee of hate,
I dissect you cell by cell, so that I might hate each one
individually and at leisure.
My lungs, duplicitous twins, expand with the utter validity
of my hate, which can never have enough of you,
Breathlessly, like two idealists in a broken submarine.

from PLEIADES, vol. 24:2
Central Missouri State Press

Honors English II

Pomerantz

Sweet Like a Crow

"The Sinhalese are beyond a doubt one of the least musical
people in the world. It would be quite impossible to have
less sense of pitch, line, or rhythm."
- Paul Bowles

Your voice sounds like a scorpion being pushed
through a glass tube
like someone has just trod on a peacock
like wind howling in a coconut
like a rusty bible, like someone pulling barbed wire
across a stone courtyard, like a pig drowning,
a vattacka [1]being fried
a bone shaking hands
a frog singing at Carnegie Hall.
Like a crow swimming in milk,
like a nose being hit by a mango
like the crowd at the Royal-Thornian [2]match,
a womb full of twins, a pariah dog
with a magpie in its mouth
like the midnight jet from Casablanca
like Air Pakistan curry,
a typewriter on fire, like a spirit in the gas
which cooks your dinner, like a hundred
pappadans [3]being crunched, like someone
uselessly trying to light 3 Roses matches in a dark room,
the clicking sound of a reef when you put your head into the sea,
a dolphin reciting epic poetry to a sleepy audience,
the sound of a fan when someone throws brinjals [4]at it,
like pineapples being sliced in the Pettah [5]market
like betel [6]juice hitting a butterfly in mid-air
like a whole village running naked onto the street
and tearing their sarongs, like an angry family
pushing a jeep out of the mud, like dirt on the needle,
like 8 sharks being carried on the back of a bicycle
like 3 old ladies locked in the lavatory
like the sound I heard when having an afternoon sleep
and someone walked through my room in ankle bracelets.

Michael Ondaatje

Ideas for List Poems

repetition

  • parallel structure
  • anaphora
  • key words

subject ideas

  • things I wish I had said
  • things I wish I hadn’t said
  • things that make me sad
  • things that make me happy
  • ways that you annoy me
  • attributes of a person, place or thing
  • things I want to do
  • things I wish I had done

to make it more than just a list

  • create fresh images
  • use sensory details
  • use order and juxtaposition to help create meaning
  • use ending to bring the whole thing together—give it a so-what
  • rhythm (change to emphasize)
  • line breaks (use to full extent)

Honors English II

Pomerantz

[1] vattacka—a vegetable

[2] Royal-Thornian—cricket team

[3] pappadans—crunchy, fried wafer made out of lentil flour

[4] brinjals—Indian egglplant

[5] Pettah--a noisy food market in Sri Lanka

[6] betel—a leaf chewed and the juice spit (like chewing tobacco)