It’s two stanzas akin to
constructing card houses
with the window open.
Or trying to make suit and tie
out of sweatshirt and jeans.
It’s structure for people falling out of trees.
Or adding a feather to a boa
without it tickling the throat.
It’s country in city,
city in country,
tiers in a land of free-form,
precise octaves
for a band that prefers to improvise.
Penned beneath the disbelieving light
of a computer monitor,
it refuses to let a blizzard run rampart
or a lover to say
the first thing out of his heart and head.
And if the choice is between a goose and a junkie
the bird wins every time.
It’s a world where ABBA is not a Swedish pop group,
iambic is not the confession of a ballpoint pen,
stress is for the lines to feel
not the nerve ends of the author,
and verse is not the opposite of better
in a bad Danish accent.
It’s all about metered, syncopated lines,
the world shaped in something other than round,
a thin cable running through emotion
and rhyme, that repetitive smooch of sound.
Editors often say,
“If you send us something traditional
then it better be good.”
So the golden rule for sonnets
is that they be on their best behavior.
