#sestina

Capitalism's hubris did survive the existence of squagels (but did we?) Postmodern definitions have a way to be uncanny. (Please stick to the text; do not change the subject.) They came pre-perf- orated, as I recall; the moral

indignity to split a squagel (Gee! and to toast one?) Reception and decay become baser and baser, if not hex'd. That's a door irrelevant of who's birth, daze, or writ. Aver, don't you adore all- usions to Pluto's hole? We need a knife,

and sharper; whatever glory can pay. The cruelty of the Queen is here unsex'd; remember that ev'ry line is a curve. Did you know flowers died, for this laurel, poor, innocent and many? To a hive the cost is but a smaller tragedy.

A theft has neither subjects nor objects. Endorsing the check is good for the nerve. A nice salad: chiffonade this sorrel; add to it tomato and an endive. We thieve and call it commerce, so to see the reaping in the sowing of the hay.

Step on it or till it and call it turf. If it attracts insects, call it floral; you need "covet" to spell words like "contrive". Myths become more than anything can be: the manna, you, the sparrow and the jay. We forget to measure our joy in pecks.

Freunde, cross your herzen, sing the choral; whom did you swap for that Westlife CD? This is the Grace we deserve; He should say our souls may be spared the weigh of all flesh. Proven and kneaded aspects, the wire monkey has no choice but to serve.

I've seen bread decay without taking knee; move on to the next slice to toast. We strive for wills sated, her visions are toral.

We are renting space in this God-sized hole; which be the tenant is unclear. She nurs'd: this cloth monkey cares with neither instinct nor will. Reaching for the grub, we can lean; the heart and the bosom have unmatched ends. I moralize, but you can't trust a liar.

All rational discourse is like a gyre; are you the tether, the ball, or the pole? after the spike comes the twisting spin, first. And then another spike and the glass is clinked when the thought can only abut the seen. Distance relates to where the light appends.

The singularity where the light bends (without an axle, what good is a tire?) cannot ever be measured by the mole. All that's studied is an observance curs'd, Experiences we have are unlinked from the evidence, histories and mean-

ing. Wherefor would a ghost need a machine? Past and future are what the present lends the space twixt the verb and noun forms of "sire". The miracle on one end and the toll on the other. Drag me and drag me purs'd; if faith is unvoiced at least it is inked;

and failing even that, it can be winked. I treat satire as if it were a gene; Optimism is the garden it tends. The works of Mahler cause me to admire the Creation. Meeting a trusting foal can be your way to walk the Earth. The worst

of it is all that approaches "I thirst." The policeman in your head must be finked and obliterated. That life's a wean and by that, the unburdening ascends. Whatever can't be smelted, turn to fire; we were all promised more than Caesar's dole;

the owner will hire as he wants. He mends if the mind will clean, pray the soul is synced. If the heart can burst, we can name the goal.

In the car, taking the long way home

Wondering if I would do anything in my first week

Back, waiting for two hours to cross over the bridge

Into Beachwood, which will welcome me back for the summer

Into backyard woods, well known streets, and my father and mother

Waiting to be reunited with the long missed sea

When I will a take day trip to the beach to reconnect with the sea

Exhausted at the end of the day, legs heavy, body sanded, returning home

Saying goodnight to my mother

And going to bed reenergized for the next week

Looking forward to hundreds more days of summer

Splinters in my feet from the boardwalk’s wooden bridge

Midnight Wawa runs, with friends driving over the same old bridge

Salt caked in my hair from the sea

Head floating, dizzy on the summer

That will never end, and it feels like home

In the embrace of my room I've lived in all week

Listening to my mother

Yelling, on the phone with her mother

Talking to her about you and trying to bridge

The gap between us that grows wider every week

But it's not going to work, and I’m lost in the sea

Of noise, and yet she thinks that she is home

As if I have not been ripped from it for the summer

And this is how I will be spending my summer

Defending us from my mother

Because I have to be good and stay home

Knowing you are only across the bridge

But at least you are not across the sea

And we could visit for a week

Would you like to come to Jersey for a week?

You don't have to stay for the summer

There's a beautiful boardwalk by the sea

It’s fine, you can ignore my mother

We can drive to the city over the bridge

I’d love to give you a tour around my home

As I stare out at the sea, missing you, my knees go weak

Knowing I can't spend the summer with you, because you're on your way home

The question of inheritance was still 

in my thoughts when I noticed the foundation

had cracked. The color of the siding had gone, 

the roots of the ivy were set to pull 

off the shingles. Such a lonely house

it was. But then, hasn’t it always been, Mother?

I remember the day I stopped hugging you, Mother. 

You were always working, just wouldn’t stay still:

“There’s always something to do around a house”.

I learned then that even a child could break foundations.

I had only meant to tug, I had only meant to pull 

on your apron strings but morning hugs were gone. 

Not long after, in the spring rain, I too was gone. 

A new house that wasn’t mine, a new mother 

on the horizon. This time I would smile and pull

out a new me, a better me, a quiet and still

me. For I bore willow roots that eroded foundations

and washed them all into sand. I was bad for houses. 

In time I would dig a plot to bury myself and house

my roots. Before the last of my youth had gone 

I believed you and  stopped building foundations.

One mother, two mother, many mothers, but you. Mother, 

I became you; raging, rushing, still. 

I wanted you to see me, your own reflecting pool. 

But the shingles slip underneath the ivy pull. 

I bore no witness when you left your house

for the ache of your absence was finally still, 

but the white-hot undertow had never gone. 

I could not look, I could not see the cracks in your foundation.

But why should I have? I had no need for mothers.

Even so, can I ask one question, Mother?

There are tides in my pond that push and pull!

Oh, there are cracks in my mud-silt foundation! 

Why had I not realized that a pond is still a house?

Mother, please, you must know how since you are gone:

For the Laurel Sponsored Prize Display at Cudgel Wars last year, I wrote a set of triads. For the same at Strawberry Raid this year, I wrote a sestina. Sestinas are a slight step away from my usual sonnets, but still use iambic pentameter (although my metre isn't strong in any case). I find them to be an excellent form for exploring a concept - in this case, the feeling that the campsite changes shape, somehow, as it gets dark. This one is specific to the site at Sigginstown, with its rooks and herons, but I've felt the same about campsites elsewhere too.

The sestina is a medieval form, originating in Old Occitan in the 12th Century. The first English sestinas occur quite late, not until 1579, and it didn't really take off as a form in English until the late 19th century. Obviously, I'm writing in English here, as I am for almost all my poetry.

The sestina doesn't use rhymes, but instead has repeated end words. If the lines of the first six-line stanza end in words 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, then the second stanza's lines end in 6, 1, 5, 2, 4, and 3. This continues for six stanzas and then ends with a three-line stanza in which all six words occur, two per line. So:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 6, 1, 5, 2, 4, 3 3, 6, 4, 1, 2, 5 5, 3, 2, 6, 1, 4 4, 5, 1, 3, 6, 2 2, 4, 6, 5, 3, 1 (6, 2) (1, 4) (5, 3)

I haven't settled on a good name for this one yet, so it's just: Strawberry Raid Sestina

Sestina for Jalen | 2.6.2026

A sestina is a thirty-nine-line poem form that repeats end words rather than following a specific rhyme scheme. This sestina was written specifically about intimate partner abuse that I endured for a year. During this process, I decided to include ending words that pertained to more than one event.

For one fleeting glance I’d give anything Bend before you as if beneath the bright sun Hands brushing your skin, trailing overeager ink To mark every piece and pulse, saved for all time Your sweet song haunts me even in sleep If it ended now I fear my heart will grow sick Wasting of withdrawal from you, pooled in my own sick The only remedy your touch or verse, your everything and anything Your body curled against mine, your warmth lulling me to sleep And when I wake I will wonder if I have been embraced by the sun Only to meet your gaze, and I’ll beg don’t fly from me this time I’ll quiet my breath and cleanse my craving’s leak of messy ink I could not remake your glory with paper or ink But you could spread your wings and find another, perhaps it’s sick To think you’d want me when I’m a dust speck and you have all space and time Though if you truly choose me, then let me lay down myself, do anything To prove my worth, you can burn me to the ground in the rays of your sun I’m the dead girl to your holy fire, bury me where you wish, I’ll smile as I sleep You’re a dream of flame and feathers, you can sing me from any eternal sleep In my unworthiness, when my lips find yours my bursting heart bleeds red ink Yet you bend down to me and lower your lids blinded as if it’s me who’s the sun As if pure instinct steers you my way in each migration, only to drop sick From the sheer frenzy of my light, not nurturing but scorching anything I wish to keep sacred of you, searing through without the gentleness of time You hold my leash in your hands, twisted and frayed yet chosen time after time And untrusting each time, I chase after you even dreaming, reaching out in my sleep Never expecting a sign back, so clumsy with being chosen, so giddy at anything I can take from you, drunk with want, I smear your soft down with a bitter black ink I bask in your presence, sunstruck till you’re heavy with my touch, sharing in my sick This taint I can’t keep to myself, this everything I give though my everything chokes the sun In moments like these I know I’m truly my father’s sun You don’t see the festering in me yet, but perhaps next time I love you so fierce, so desperate, but can't you see my love is sick? Can’t you feel the cuts I leave on you as you sleep? Can’t you sense the sepsis, wrapping my heart in veins of ink? Can’t you see how you rot beside me, for one more touch I’ll take everything and anything My love is too sick, too wrong, too much, like an overeager sun You won’t find anything beautiful of my deepening marks on you in time So as I curl up to sleep, won’t you take your feathered page and fly far from the sin-steeped stain of my ink?

A Sestina based on Madd Buckley's album DogBird! I've been listening to it obsessively for so long. This was both way harder and easier than i originally thought it would be lol