Letter to the Woman Who Stopped Writing Me Back || Jeffrey McDaniel

I wanted you to be the first to know - Harper & Row

has agreed to publish my collected letters to you.

The tentative title is Exorcist in the Gym of Futility.

Unfortunately I never mailed the best one,

which certainly was one of a kind.

A mutual friend told me that when I quit drinking,

I surrendered my identity in your eyes.

Now I'm just like everybody else, and it's so funny,

the way monogamy is funny, the way

someone falling down in the street is funny.

I entered a revolving door and emerged

as a human being. When you think of me

is my face electronically blurred?

I remember your collarbone, forming the tiniest

satellite dish in the universe, your smile

as the place where parallel lines inevitably crossed.

Now dinosaurs freeze to death on your shoulder.

I remember your eyes: fifty attack dogs on a single leash,

how I once held the soft audience of your hand.

I've been ignored by prettier women than you,

but none who carried the heavy pitchers of silence

so far, without spilling a drop.

--



You receive the attitude of the speaker throughout the tone and descriptions found in the poem. The speaker finds "monogamy" funny, maybe because it is very hard to imagine him/herself being with just one person. The speaker also finds someone falling down the street as a funny scene.

A lot of scattered thoughts in this poem though which might have a meaning. Since the title tells us that this is infact a "letter", we can assume that the speaker is having trouble forming the write words and communicating them to the said woman. This poem has its moments however:

I remember your eyes: fifty attack dogs on a single leash,

how I once held the soft audience of your hand.

Wow. I can feel the emotion; I can feel the thrill. And...

I've been ignored by prettier women than you,

but none who carried the heavy pitchers of silence

so far, without spilling a drop.

These lines keep me from deleting this poem off my favorite list. The imagery is just beautiful.