I gathered the stones myself,
stacked them before you
like a temple offering,
my skin the sacrifice
as I bared it inch by inch
and asked for a blessing
you denied me
until the pile was fragments
and my flesh peppered
with your approval.
I gathered the stones myself,
stacked them before you
like a temple offering,
my skin the sacrifice
as I bared it inch by inch
and asked for a blessing
you denied me
until the pile was fragments
and my flesh peppered
with your approval.
Carol J Forrester 
Turn to Stone……the prompt lies in the title and is carried through under very dire circumstances in the poem — if I’m reading it correctly. The stones piled in offering….a blessing denied…..and then “my flesh peppered with your approval.” Is s/he stoned in the end and that body, now bruised from the stones, is one the pleaed-to individual can subjugate and accept? A very dark ending………so very well written.
And if I’ve interpreted far astray from your meaning…apologies…but then I’ve always thought that the mark of a good writer who can make the reader have a visceral response…as in filling in the story in this case.
You’re pretty much dead on with your interpretation, though you’ve gone a little deeper perhaps, but the point of poetry is often to take the poem further.
Sadly, what happens if we allow others to define us.
It is indeed.
This seems to me to be running with the biblical theme, one of the tried and trusted themes of women accepting their punishment just for being women.
And the prize for getting my meaning perfectly goes to Jane! So happy when you pop by and seem to be on the exact same wavelength.
Ooh, you’ve made my evening! I read so many poems where I haven’t got a clue what the poet is on about except trying to look clever, it’s nice to read a poem of a less than hitting-you- between-the-eyes-with-a-poleaxe evidence that repays careful reading.
Haha, glad I could make you’re evening. I do try to avoid the poleaxe, but being clever for the sake of being clever doesn’t benefit anyone.
It used to make me feel lacking or stupid, but on the whole I think I’m intelligent enough to read poetry and understand it…if there’s anything to understand.
If poetry fails to connect with the reader it’s missed the point in my opinion. That’s not your lacking, it’s the writers.
A lot of the stuff in poetry journals, experimental or ‘utterly mindblowing’ type stuff, just doesn’t make sense. It might ramble all over the page and have random capitalised words or big gaps between them, but it still doesn’t make sense. It’s tiring.
I know exactly what you mean. I find my favourite poems are often the really sharp, clear ones that hit like an arrow.
If you can’t remember a single line or a single image from a poem when you’ve read it a couple of times, there’s something not quite right in my book.
When I think of the fate of women under the heel of Islam, I shake with fury. Me too, indeed “punished for just being a woman”. But sadly we live in the Land of Blame, where civil rights and feminist causes makes being male and white less than admirable.
Stoning also appears in the bible, and Islam itself is not necessarily the issue, just some interpretations. Just as some interpretations of Christianity can be harmful. If you read the bible women get a tough deal pretty much the whole way through.
It’s a painful read. To revere someone/something and give offerings, only to have them turned into weapons to wound the giver 😦
I like this one! The gathering of stones for approval and the letting go and finding approval in the loss! Nice!
Life’s ironies. You write it well, Carole
I see you went with the quadrille too, Carol, and yours has stoned me into wakefulness this rainy morning. We women provide the ammunition without realising and men seem quite happy to punish us for something over which we have no control. I blame it on religion, historically the male domain.
Why must we be such “people pleasers”?! Co-dependency gives the other too much power but I cannot cast the first stone…
Nice last two lines with the word “peppered”.
A dark telling, of an ethos that, sadly, remains unchanged. Visceral and real, with such a contrast between the yearning tone of the narrator and the utter, apathetic silence of the one whom the narrator addresses. Chilling and heartbreaking!