Allen Braden
Often I give myself challenges as part of the drafting process. Concerning this poem, I tried to loosely follow the structure of an Italian sonnet but with thirteen lines instead of the traditional fourteen. Since the topic is my neice's turning thirteen, each of the thirteen lines has thirteen syllables. Using the epistolary approach allows for more intimacy than other kinds of poems and the reader becomes an eavesdropper.
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Birthday Card from an Escalator
for Jennifer Green
Magic stairs, you said, new to language then. Steps appear
and disappear. Because you are now thirteen, I wait
for you to vanish. What I mean: for some teenager
to show through. Today cool music fills the hollow flute
of your body. This inevitable song grows, spills
across delicate merchandise and poised mannequins,
over kiosks and countertops, the town mall a small
version of a city. Your god is a musician
harmonizing blood, eggs and bone. Beneath us, one step
rises. Then another. This escalates. Whatever
melody plays inside, resist it. Whether hip hop
or pop rock is proof of magic, do not go. Keep clear
of stairs that lift you from one level to another.
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Allen Braden is the author of A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood (University of Georgia) and Elegy in the Passive Voice (University of Alaska/Fairbanks), winner of the Midnight Sun Chapbook Contest. His poems have been published online by Poetry Daily, Verse Daily and elsewhere.