"Anthracite" and "Lamina"
Anthracite
Hard, compact varieties, boasting only submetallic lusters, too,
Succumb to melanomas, suffer crevices from infidelities, know
The pain of ice-staged crevasses, lack ironmongery sufficient to
Sooth, calm, provide succor when children run away from home.
Midlife can’t offer sanctuary from hurt, despair, poverty, ill-health.
Grey hairs, facial lines, tummy bulges never guaranteed serenity’s
Visits, restful nights, noontide smiles, sweet breath, noiseless guts.
Rather, aging conveys difficult isthmuses athwart youth and years.
Videlicet, no matter how steeled a cynosure, how popular or
Hated, not early time’s vigor or late decades’ caducity causes
Anything relative to middle age’s oscillations. Ragged moves
Stay inefficacious in collecting harmony, concord, also peace.
Lamina
Plated structures, like so many human exchanges
Dissolve upon being pressed by external forces.
See, auscultation culls not merely internal noise,
But, equally, acidic aphorisms, unnecessary dicta.
It’s still sounder to absquatulate, to not look back,
To allow important feelings to wither, die, reseed
Whenever family affections, romantic love spring
Up among bulwarks of heart, hearth, & drugstores,
In conversations, or popular conceptions of myths.
The ultimate tendency of individualism remains
Duty; denial can’t supersede collective contracts
Even when discussion of limitations overarch: all
Findings, experts’ declarations, morning coffee.
(Researcher's choice of: methodology, data saving
Tend to limit the power found in popular opinion.)
At several levels of abstraction, elaborations do
Not surpass deletions, addendums, numerous, or
Typos. Rather, they incorporate “feminist” plus
“Religious” appellations, rework bland borders,
Heighten awareness about our basic solicitation
Of mad, profound truths, in lieu of old cabbage.
Specifically, society wants clarity in coupon use.
Consequently, most conceptualizations, all merit,
Certain dachshunds, objectively, correctly, probe
Around regarding roles, rules and responsibilities
When assigned mites (or, alternative hermeneutic
Interpretations). On balance, brief consultations,
Incorporating proper dialectic, almost never tilt
Proposals for provocative responses, nor contest
Philosophical filiation, burnt toast, odd bubbles.
KJ Hannah Greenberg has been playing with words for an awfully long time. Initially a rhetoric professor and a National Endowment for the Humanities Scholar, she shed her academic laurels to romp around with a prickle of imaginary hedgehogs.
Thereafter, she’s been nominated once for a PEN/America award in nonfiction, once for a Pushcart Prize in Literature for fiction, and three times for a Pushcart Prize in Literature in poetry. To boot, Hannah’s had more than thirty of her books published, and has served as an editor for several literary journals.
