13 Comments
User's avatar
Sherman Alexie's avatar

Thank you! Getting compared to Plath and Frost makes my day!

Expand full comment
Kathryn Benander's avatar

I love this! I hear Sylvia Plath here and maybe a bit of "good fences make good neighbors." I love the way it ends with a mirror to show us our own hypocrisy. Very funny and a little terrifying too!

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

Thank you! Getting compared to Plath and Frost makes my day!

Expand full comment
Steve Lovelace's avatar

Is it possible for humans to not take sides. I suppose there has been a few over the centuries. But it is very difficult. I believe everyone does not want to look behind the curtain. I usually make an attempt. Thank You again.

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

Thank you, Steve. Fitzgerald said the sign of a superior intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas at the same time. I fail often.

Expand full comment
Dee's avatar

I truly enjoyed the broken villanelle structure. I love the universality of our “broken”. Points of view. So captures this strange era of division!

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

Thank you so much. I had not thought of the brokeness of my villanelle connecting with the brokenness of ‘us.’

Expand full comment
tridukes's avatar

Thanks for this. Any effort to heal through art is valuable and commendable!

Expand full comment
feral cat society's avatar

Beautiful and painfully true.

Expand full comment
Marcia Lovelace's avatar

Damn, I wish I could think this poem was about "those other people". I am so enraged and afraid about what's happening in this country that it's hard to to keep an open heart or mind. Thanks for the reminder to keep trying.

Expand full comment
Elena Solow's avatar

Sorry the book was about Mina Loy by Mary ann Caws🤷🏻‍♀️🥱

Expand full comment
Elena Solow's avatar

It was okay. Always like your voice. My tv in the background. Turned off my iodine that was a book reading about Mina Caws. The bird is nice.😷💘

Expand full comment
Wayne Kigerl's avatar

Methinks I perceive a wee bit O'Burlesque if not O'Blarney.

Expand full comment