Sunday, December 09, 2007

Museum Marble

[a poem inspired by the Can You Picture That prompt at Cafe Writing's December Project. This photograph was provided by Carmi Levy of Written, Inc.]





Museum Marble


Those crafty artists
used paint and glaze and plastic bags and sea sponges
and a feather
to make the wooden door frames blend in with the real marble
so that as you move from one room of
the museum
to the next, you only know which is which if you touch it.
If it feels cool, it is the real thing.
And if it doesn't feel cool to the touch you have just gotten away with
putting your bare fingers on a piece of artwork.


9 comments:

Crafty Green Poet said...

That made me smile!

sister AE said...

Hi! Now do you like it because of the sentiment - or are you just tickled because I used the word "crafty" in the first line? (just kidding - and you can smile for whatever reason you want!)

paisley said...

i can see the length of the lines,, but when i read it,, i don't feel them all if that makes sense....

sister AE said...

I do understand, Paisley. I think this is more prose-y. I like the text, but I'm not sure it is the shape I want. Eventually I'll come back to this and play with it, but I think I'm done with it for now.

MissMeliss said...

I don't think it reads as prose at all - I love it, by the way - but then, blank verse has always appealed to me.

(And I feel the lines, but I confess I'm curious as to how you might let it evolve into something else.)

sister AE said...

Thanks, MissMeliss. My usual method is to put line breaks where I want pauses, like a big comma. At some point, I'll read through this and play with where I think the pauses should go, add one here, take one away there. And the way I might test syllable stresses while mispronouncing a long unfamiliar word, I will try stressing different words or groups of words in this, to see how it reads differently.

But everyone will read the poem with their own voice, and ultimately, it is the reader's sense of where to pause that will lent emphasis. What I do may or may not influence that.

Jessica said...

I love the ending -- I always want to touch things in art museums!

Anonymous said...

Neat & witty.

sister AE said...

Thanks, Jessica. I get that urge, too. Then I hear the echo of "don't touch!" in my head and with an internal sigh, stick my hands in my pockets - just in case.

Thanks, dick.