Thursday, February 9, 2012

Nothing Is Wasted

Nothing Is Wasted

The college course I took in Clothing
and Textiles, useful for recalling

now the meaning of the word gamine.
How the girls in sixth grade would preen

before their lockers, spraying CK One
onto a brush or denim jacket, or Sun-

Ripened Raspberry right into their hair.
How certain girls would choose dare

over truth at sleepovers. The half-healed-
over hole above my navel, semi-sealed

and without jewelry. The swoony letter
I left in a boy’s car. The blue sweater

I buy again and again, only slightly varied
in proportion and weight. How I’ve carried

Japanese coins in my change purse for two
years because I like the hole cut through

the coin, and its raised chrysanthemums,
and also, just in case. The banana that becomes

more valuable when it browns, for bread.
The hours of sleep, and what I’ve done instead

of sleeping. The cities I’ve lived in and gone
away from. The money I gave to a salon

for the uneven haircut, the months I never
cut my hair before and after. The clever

joke I made once, but cannot retell.
The broken sand dollar. The lost seashell.

9 comments

  1. Posted at 1:04 a.m.: "What I've done instead of sleeping."

    Like the looseness of the stitching-together of the content with the choice of a tighter form...

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  2. The conversational rhythm and disursive enjambment hide the rhyme quite nicely.

    In line with my zen quote of the day: "there are no mistakes" (Miles Davis).

    I'd love to hear this read, if for no other reason than it forces a different kind of reading than one usually encounters.

    Another beauty.

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  3. Nice thoughts...memories, pieces of the masterpiece you. Truly nothing is wasted. Thank you for sharing

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  4. This has a lovely cadence, the rhyme not overdone and subtle because of how the lines carry over. The bits and pieces saved (mostly only in memory), value known only to the poem's "I", are telling. I like how the lines inform each other.

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  5. My sweater is black. My perfume was Anais Anais (you know, the 80s), I never throw away a banana.

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  6. O my goodness...nothing indeed was wasted...a new way to look, isn't it? Thank you for introducing me to this. You rock!

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  7. Great writing. Truly impressive.

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  8. Rhyming couplets serve the content to objectify "nothing is wasted." Completing a completed experience. Perception of how even the littlest of them fill one's stock of memories as "nothing wasted" is a brave look at staying alive. Bravo, Hannah. (Would like to hear an audio of this, H.)

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  9. i like the couplets, too. you manage them well, and the form reinforces the content (smart :-) -- sounds leave the mouth but aren't lost -- they come back transformed

    it is a conservation principle. energy can never be destroyed -- including the energy we imprint upon things and people -- but it can be changed -- is, inevitably, changed ...

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