26 June 2006

irresponsible intern
"the power went off at
my house," she said.
"my alarm turned off."
liar.
she hit sleep too
many times, and suddenly
it was an hour later, as
she dreamed about the
boyfriend she hasn't been
talking to for the
past four days.
she gained an hour of
sleep, but is tired already.

2 comments:

ehammelshaver said...

oh dear god:

the power actually went off in the middle of the night, but luckily i woke up in time to use my cell phone as an alarm. it was god, attempting to smite me, i know it.

Stephen Imperato said...

instances like this one with the alarm clock are the only things that keep me from becoming a 100% atheist.

good luck and things that just happen in my favor are always chance occurrences, but things that completely fuck me up and make me late for work are the spiteful works of a dissatisfied god, punishing me for not believing in him. which, ironically, just makes me dislike god even more.

as for the poem, i think its lovely. it's framing theme is about one of my most favorite things--sleep. dialogue mixed in with narration in past tense makes it read very prosey and its great to start it off with words spoken by a person, thus creating a character right off the bat. but then the short expressive line, "liar", acts as a transitional speedbump and makes it very poetic. the rest of the poem winds down the situation in a sort of falling motion, dealing with the personal issues that keep our character awake before circling back to talking about sleep. youve used sleep as a bookend theme but youve done a spectacular job varying this theme from beginning to end, making the beginning very different from the end.