South Florida Fashion Shoot

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Bernie01
Posts: 777
Joined: 30 Jul 2015, 11:14

South Florida Fashion Shoot

#1 Post by Bernie01 » 21 Apr 2018, 11:37

R#1

She found sailor pants
and wore them damn well,
the ocean sashayed behind her
with green hues and shadow.

She glistened in South Florida
where the heat is both eccentric
and glamorous, a royal on holiday
seeming to roam a private island.

My wife grabbed her for photos
and we sold the lot to a Singapore
magazine. Her fire eater red mouth
translated into a dozen languages.

Later, she ran into the ocean
like a suicide and the sea tossed
her back half-naked and dripping
like a free-style swimmer.

Next to the ageless sea our ideas
drift wasp thin, fragile as contrails.
Desire no longer speaks to us,
love sleeps, no longer pulls our hair.




Original

She had found sailor pants
and wore them damn well,
the ocean sashayed behind her
with green hues and shadow.

She was clean and rich,
a model for Bal Harbour shops
and nominated for Spring issue
by my wife.

I wrote about her in my diary.
She spoke a lot of French
but unimportant if you only
wanted a good time.

Later, she ran into the ocean
like a suicide and the sea tossed
her back half-naked and dripping
like a free-style swimmer.

South Florida where the heat
is both eccentric and glamorous,
your heavenly contrail blooms
anonymously and each solemn
life opens like a royal on holiday
among private islands.

IndianaDP
Posts: 181
Joined: 24 Mar 2018, 16:53

Re: South China Morning Post Fashion Shoot

#2 Post by IndianaDP » 21 Apr 2018, 16:15

Bernie, once again, a great poem.

The simplicity of s1 is wonderful, love the sailor pants.

‘clean and edible’ hmmm, I can see the image you want but im caught between oral sex and a washed vegetable.

Each stanza is important and adds a new clue.

S1- the main character and setting.
S2- the wife.
S3- n’s interest, her free spirit.
S4- comparing her to a suicide.

‘Olympic swimmer’ you like to use Olympic to describe well toned, I believe you have used this before. How about ‘free-style swimmer’, it would go with her good time nature.

BobBradshaw
Posts: 2683
Joined: 03 Jun 2016, 21:03

Re: South Florida Fashion Shoot

#3 Post by BobBradshaw » 22 Apr 2018, 05:55

I like a number of things about this poem, the sailor pants and the sashaying sea, the heat as eccentric and glamorous( like the celebrity herself), the sea tossing her back half naked—but especially the ideas expressed in that last stanza... where the exploiters of this young woman unexpectedly are affected by what they do... recognizing their ideas are wasp thin... and how their work affects their own lives...”Desire no longer speaks to us...”

IndianaDP
Posts: 181
Joined: 24 Mar 2018, 16:53

Re: South Florida Fashion Shoot

#4 Post by IndianaDP » 23 Apr 2018, 21:37

I like both versions, but perhaps because of my age I relate more to the second revision. In the earliest version I saw the narrator as possibly being involved or wanting involvement with the model. In the revision I see his desire but also his recognition that romance has disappeared in years. In both versions it is interesting how the wife factors in, an understanding participant.

Bernie01
Posts: 777
Joined: 30 Jul 2015, 11:14

South Florida Fashion Shoot

#5 Post by Bernie01 » 24 Apr 2018, 04:35

Great comments, very helpful with this poem and another in the incubator.

thanks.


here is our IBPC judge, a comment and a pom:

C. Wade Bentley: “Over the past year or so, I have several times decided to be done submitting poems, maybe even to be done writing poems. And it’s not because I’m bitter or discouraged or convinced that poetry can do nothing to improve the world (although I am convinced of this). I think it’s because I sometimes can’t answer the big questions: why are you doing this? what do you hope the outcome will be? so what? and then what? But then I read a poem by someone else that opens up my chest cavity and applies the defibrillator paddles directly to my flat-lining heart, and so I decide I should keep writing, for another month or two, at least, just on the off chance that I can discover how such a thing is done.” (website)



As Observed from a Stationary Picnic Table

Julia asked me why I didn't come there anymore
to eat my lunch on the picnic table beside the statue
of Albert Einstein, each wild hair on his head
a masterpiece in marble, though clearly I was there
now—or then. Was it, she asked, that I felt lesser
than, in his presence, me eating a tuna salad
sandwich before going back to my job delivering
boxed wine to high-rise shut-ins on my bicycle,
while Al had been captured in stone juggling
the solar system between his hands? No, I said,
I think he would've been happy to sit here with me
and share a sandwich and slip a straw into a box
of Californian rosé meant for Eunice Carver
of 94D Park Place, and I think we would have talked
about the violin which I also played when I
was young and the way the Yankees have tanked
again, and I would have gently explained to him
that whistling at the women walking by us
on the street isn't done anymore. Fair enough,
he might have said, but I am still doing it in my head—
that's still okay, I hope, imagining a universe in my head
where just one time Marilyn Monroe responds
to my catcall and comes over to run her fingers
through my hair? I said that I hoped so, too,
and told him how sometimes when I was weaving
my bike through traffic I imagined myself chasing
a beam of light while pedaling at the speed of light,
no longer content to stand on the platform or sit
at a picnic table (this to Julia, who said she had a straw,
if that's what it took) but standing at the front of the train
with my head out the window where the light would hit first.


C. Wade Bentley

Poetry Northwest
Summer & Fall 2017

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