Assignment two: Keranen

And What Of The Moss
By: Charmi Keranen
From: The Afterlife is a Dry County
Published by: Big Wonderful Press


The couple you saw
lying deep inside themselves

their backs pressed into
that tall blue field

their hands touching

the grass and its sway

There was a stolen bicycle chained
to a crucifix

The Born Again don't bleed

or pedal - really

I looked, once, into
those gray polished stones

The woman's lips were moving

The man was closing his eyes


I chose this poem in particular because it reminded me of some of the things I have wrote, to an extent. Particularly, the stanza that reads "There was a stolen bicycle chained/ to a crucifix." That particular separation, putting the "to a crucifix" on a separate line reminds me of my own work. If I were writing that same sentence in a poem, that's the exact way it would be wrote. I'm not sure why to be honest, it just feels right. The last two lines reminded me of things I write as well. Two separate people, unnamed, doing a simple action, separated into individual lines. I have ended a ton of poems in that way. Once again, I'm not sure why, but it seems right to me. Besides the poem reminding me of my own work, I'm fond of the lack of punctuation. The poem doesn't feel rushed, even though it has no punctuation (probably because of the white space.) I also enjoyed her decisions on which sentences to begin with a capital letter. It helps the break the poem into sentences, even though punctuation is absent.