Swallowing love & similies

Holly Day's poem "The First Step" grabbed me with the first line, but what I really love about it is the idea of eating the written word, understanding the meaning of marriage by swallowing it. Lovely.

In Changming Yuan's poem "Fish," both the sound and concept of the phrase "swallowing similies" perfectly reflect what we're doing here at Eat Your Words.

Many thanks to both poets!

The First Step

I take the piece of paper, put it

in my mouth, feel the word "love" dissolve in my saliva, in my blood

and now I understand marriage.

The individual letters drift like little stones

throughout my body, break up like tiny meteors, turn to sand

sink to my feet and

keep me here.

—Holly Day

Holly Day is a housewife and mother of two living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, who teaches needlepoint classes in the Minneapolis school district. Her poetry has recently appeared in The Worcester Review, Broken Pencil, and Slipstream, and she is a recent recipient of the Sam Ragan Poetry Prize from Barton College. Her book publications include Music Composition for Dummies, Guitar-All-in-One for Dummies, Notenlesen für Dummies Das Pocketbuch, and Music Theory for Dummies, which has recently been translated into French, Dutch, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, and German. Her novel, The Trouble With Clare" is due out from Hydra Publications in 2013.

"Here," Heidi Kenyon, 2014

Fish

If you could, would you become a fish

That can swim, freely in the water, but without

Being able to touch the horizon?  —I don’t know

If you could, would you become a whale

The king of the ocean, the ocean of words

For instance, the most powerful?  —How powerful?

You wait for all other words to feed you

Like planktons, or swallow other fishes like similes

Metaphors, because you are big. —Yes, very big

If you could, would you become a blue whale

Whose calls and songs can reach afar, far

Beyond a civilization? —Who can hear me then?

—Changming Yuan

"Jonah and the Whale," Pieter Lastman, 1621

Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Mango

Textured with

Presented in the shape of

All female tenderness

As smooth as sleek

As fantasy, where, and whereby

Let

man go

—Changming Yuan

Changming Yuan, seven-time Pushcart nominee and author of Chansons of a Chinaman (2009) and Landscaping (2013), grew up in rural China but currently tutors in Vancouver, where he co-edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan and operates PP Press. With a PhD in English, Yuan has most recently been interviewed by World Poetry (CFRO100.5FM), and had poetry appear in Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, London Magazine, Threepenny Review, and 800 other literary journals/anthologies across 28 countries.

"Still Life with Mangoes," Paul Gauguin, 1896

Public Domain, courtesy The Athenaeum.