(This was my original interpretation of this poem, making
assumptions that turned out not to be valid since when she talks about jars,
she means jars literally)
Even before I got the chance to write about the second poem
she posted and question whether or not it is a response of one or more of mine,
up pops another poem that looks suspiciously like a response to my latest poetic
posting.
But since the second of the three poems she posted is so remarkably
complex, I’ll tackle that poem first and get to back to the poem I suspect is a
response to mine.
However, the most recent poem raises questions about other
previous poems whether or not they are responding to mine or not.
Because her the second of her most recent poems uses the
same metaphor of a jar, I’ll address this first – even though I have doubts
that she is responding to me, partly because her poem is so much better than
mine.
I actually wrote my poem at the height of my misery last
summer when I was speculating as to whether or not her exploits were real and with
the possibility that what I presumed was wrong. Called “an empty jar,” it referred
to a jar I had on my desk at word, but more importantly a symbol of expectation
and possibility.
Her poem also deals with jars but is filled with allusions I
have yet to figure out.
Both her poem and mine seem to be about failed sexuality and
love.
She lives her life filling and emptying jars in a routine of
sex and love, a pattern that in the end she is forced to scrub clean and start
over – even as she scrubs one person, she waits on a call or a knock from
another.
Yet there is the impression that after she has scrubbed
clean one, she does not intend to get involved with anyone else, trying to stay
cool in her impoverished state, and struggles to push the panic she feels down
into those jars, knowing he or she won’t be arriving today.
I’m already aware of how important numbers are in her poems,
and so items such as 16 ounce, 21 scrubbings, two cent store fan and 1000 surges
have significance I can only guess about.
If each jar is a love affair, she might mean the number of
people in her life she has held out hope for though that explanation seems to simplistic.
The 16 ounce jars confuses me too, though I’m certain it has
importance, though I suspect it may be an allusion to Shakespeare’s pound of
flesh, which is a heart so each morning she filles up her heart only to have it
empty by night, day and nigh being metaphors, and how after each – 21 – she
scrubs them clean of he or she as she waits for a call, a knock, or a note.
Then, trying to relax in bed she tries to keep from getting
sweaty again (sexual image or nerves, it’s hard to tell) in the single stream
of her cheap fan, counting to a thousand to the unweak surges – these surges
have two fold meanings, pounding valves of hear heart into jars knowing that he
or she won’t be coming today.
If 16 ounces means hearts, she may well be reflecting on
what she said in her first recent poem about living in shells, and that she fills
up other hearts each morning and empties them by evening, clearing them carefully,
while waiting for love’s opportunity to come again.
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