Vox Populi
A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature with over 20,000 daily subscribers and over 8,000 archived posts.
Doug Anderson: Distance
She said my poems had emotion in them
as if they might have syphilis.
Hers, she said, were ironically distanced,
questioning the things they spoke of
as if they weren’t quite real.
As if all we’d always believed
was some kind of sham and language
was itself a kind of lie.
Then one day I saw her sobbing
in the parking lot at Starbucks.
I wondered how irony could be so cruel.
Copyright 2022 Doug Anderson
Discover more from Vox Populi
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Love this
LikeLike
Thanks, Barbara. I do too.
>
LikeLiked by 1 person
surprisingly heavy-handed for a Doug poem.
LikeLike
Doug can be light-fingered or heavy-handed. He can tiptoe and he can kickbox. He can be ironic, tender, angry, smooth, rough or ready. Doug is many. He contains multitudes.
>
LikeLike
Yes, but heavy-handed is not a good thing in poetry. It’s too closely related to strident and/or predictable.
LikeLike
Thanks. Take a look at Wayne Karlin’s poem tomorrow and tell us what you think.
>
LikeLike
So much packed into so few words. Excellent.
LikeLike
yes, compact and yet conversational at the same time.
LikeLike
Concise, cunningly crafted and oh, the irony!
LikeLike
Yes, a very compact narrative.
>
LikeLiked by 1 person