Two poems

Five/Fourths

This life is a quatrain
Four parts. Then, now,
Next. With you I
Settle into never.

Had once I been that
Which I wish then,
Surely this would not
Lie between us now.

No, to listen to stories of
My youth, it matters not
That memories like this or that
Are true. Only, you

Are young again and I
Walk as I should, dreamed
I would. Never seeing the
Distance between us. Time

That can’t be forgiven,
For what time I have
Cannot be given away, though
I try. Reaching across the divide.

When Bars as These Won’t Read

When bars as these won’t read, a villanelle
Cold fashioned to restrain, what never frees,
Then what their meter measures must rebel.

The thing within the heart of every cell
That beats the poem racking for release,
When bars as these won’t read, a villanelle.

For such silent strophes can never tell
The truth they hide, that languish in between,
And what such meter measures must rebel:

From metal scansions poor contrived to quell
By rigid time what death alone does cease.
When bars as these won’t read. A villanelle

Lacking all prosody, despite how well
One reasons rhyme, will offer scant relief.
And what is falsely measured will rebel.

For stanzas writ in steel only compel
That trapped within to reject what they teach
For what their meter measures must rebel,
When bars as these won’t read, a villanelle.

_{Image: Chris Barbalis / Unsplash}

Contributors

Lawson Strickland Lawson Strickland is a staff writer for the Angolite. He is a multiple PEN America award winner for fiction, memoir, and drama. With N. West Moss, he is the founder of the Big Muddy Short Fiction Contest for incarcerated writers.

Topics

• Futures

Tags

• incarcerated and formerly incarcerated authors
• national poetry month
• poetry