Murmur
A collective mmm washed over the blue-iris poet-room
When you said you liked surprising hyphenates.
(Those poets and their mmms.)
This mmm was a vast,
Soft-shored, honey-meadowed,
Broom-wave of a sound.
You have been a pale-flower, petal-bending,
Wind-thrown background dancer.
You forget that you can be a hot-bright,
Found-gold, leaf-root-stem, hell-yellow,
Park-bark plant-and-ranter, as well.
But you were too swept to remember
What else you had meant to say. Well now it is stark-dark
And the rain is a sea monster weeping in your ear.
Home is one neon-deemed, green-rushed, bicycle-sigh away.
Well now it is too late to be day-caffeinated. Soon you will
Be a moon-studious, rock-coughing, light-starved pain-ball
Tossing little words like this onto your thirty-minute pillow.
From Abigail Cohrs: I'm not sure what's more poetic than the experience of poetry itself, which is why I've lately been exploring meta-poems as an art form and writing pieces such as Murmur. For me, this poem is a fun formal experiment but also a commentary on poetry and its effect on me, both inside poet-spaces, and outside them, in the pragmatic, prosaic world.