Preview

Love it, Jamie. You'll make a first-class poltergeist.

I like these lines particularly --

I map the playground
of the small, fine hairs
at the back of your neck

Thanks for posting!

I saw the title, and I thought, "What's she playing at? Awfully businesslike... but it's Perks. I know it won't be what I expect."

Well, hello, I got that right, didn't I?

Your splendid spirit nursery-rhyme was in my vision through the rest of the poem, following me through it like a ghost in the hall. It only vaporised at the door, into that soft assonant significant parting couplet - what a turn of metaphor! These two retuned aphorisms are clever and deft, but - even better - fitting.

The K's, silent or clicking, spark around the place along with your array of deliberate placed images and careful word-pairs that pace me through:

glimpse / ghost
rattle / knock
foreknell / floorboard
balance / trinkets
wick / oil / hinges
vanguard / angry

does not yet squeak -- how much of a story is that in itself! Each word is stressed, like a whispering voice, or each tiptoeing step of an intruder.

That thrills me as a reader: your marrying of sound and sense of words. And then, in the end, that intimation that sense will evaporate, leaving sound, then just a memory.

This has taken me ages to write, because I keep going back to read the poem over again. I hope you're reading it over and over, for the joy of knowing you wrote it. I love it, Jamie.

Jamie, let it not be ages more before the next. Very enjoyable read this morning. Thanks!

Perks said:

Thanks. On both counts. It's been ages since I wrote a poem.

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It has been ages but damn, woman. You've still got the touch.
This is fantastic. I love it.

there is something compelling about the pace of this. it urges the reader on, not in a frantic or breathless way but, perhaps assisted by the lack of punctuation, with a fluidity that makes the revolving imagery more than the sum of its parts.

your control of language and sober eye are on full display, and the result is enigmatic and yet accessible.

This kinda blew me away the first times I read, and I couldn't think of anything specific to say. So, finally, I thought - along with excellent images and just the right amount of creep to the pacing, the overall meaning of a "preview" of one's spirit in the everyday earthly realm is a really cool idea and you've created a wonderful mythology within the short piece that lingers and sticks with this reader!! Thanks for posting this!

I suppose haunting is the appropriate word choice here, both because of subject matter and effect. This piece stirred in me every desire to re-read my collected works of Poe. I don't have time for that right now, dammit! I'll just give this little beauty another read and feel sated... for a while.

Perks said:

Sarita, never let it be said that you don't know how to make someone's day. Thank you very much!

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Does this make up for calling you an asshole?