Iambic OCD, first fingers forced,
her fealty, 400 year old king,
a caustic correspondence with a corpse.
Addict from an assignment, 17 —
don’t know what any of it means. Quatrains
restrain. A couplet is a cage. A box
to bind behemoth’s rhythms rage refrain
in 14 lines. Insanity kneesocked
in British architecture locked. A teen
boy-crazed, atop a brook, will not die down
or drown, be written in his book. Between
the stricture of his song, her soul’s the sound.
A dainty voice his pentameter shook.
This broken girl will live to write a book.
KRISTIN GARTH is a poet from Pensacola and a sonnet stalker. Her sonnets have stalked the pages of Occulum, Anti-Heroin Chic, Fourth & Sycamore, Drunk Monkeys, Digging Through the Fat, Neologism Poetry Journal, Society for Classical Poets and many other publications. Her poetry dollhouse chapbook Pink Plastic House is now available through Maverick Duck Press (maverickduckpress.com). Follow her on Twitter: @lolaandjolie.
Image: [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
The Cabinet of Heed 