The BlueIris Semi-Nightly Poem Thread, 9/27/07

[BlueIris]

In the 1994 book, A Formal Feeling Comes: Poems in Form By Contemporary Women, the author had this to say about the series of sonnets from which the following is taken: "The poe(m)...(is) part of a sonnet sequence tracing the rise and fall of the last Empress of China. Tz'u-Hsi entered the Imperial Palance as a fifth-place concubine. When she birthed a son, she rose quickly through the ranks to become Empress at the age of twenty-six. Her last act was to appoint a two-year-old to her throne, and the imperial system collapsed shortly after in 1912...But why sonnets?...Because one theme of the series is duality: heart and mind, ambition and passivity, nurture and destruction. I imagined a woman forced to balance in herself many opposing forces."

—from "Notes From a Chinese Love Manual"

"The White Tiger Leaps"

He jumps from behind, flying like a shard of glass
or maybe cloud. The terror lies
in not knowing which. Too proud
to turn around, you memorize
the light before you, jade, flowers.
You think: I see this, I can
control something. Naked, on all fours
you bury the desire to run,
imagine instead, his adoring yellow eyes
and claws closed up. And when
he takes you by surprise
you hang on to your vision
of roses and jewels and falling
light. Quickly, he devours it all.

—Sarah Gorham