STATE LINES
California Poetry
The titles of Brittany Perham’s poems borrow the numerical system used by art galleries to catalog paintings. Each poem is a “double portrait” designed to explore human intimacy. “DP.agp.11” is unique in that it uses a strict poetic form, the pantoum, to evoke the emotional entanglement between two lovers. The form originates from the Malaysian folksong tradition. In contemporary English poetry, the pantoum consists of stanzas in which the second and fourth lines of one stanza repeat as the first and third of the next. The taut circularity of Perham’s pantoum, which also rhymes, evokes a kind of numbness felt by the poem’s speaker and likely her absent partner too.
DP.agp.11
The likelihood I’ll talk to you today is very small. I’ll shut in. My mind will loop some pictures on the wall. Today is very small: a matchbook with an open flap, a picture on the wall, a postage stamp, a pocket map. A matchbook with an open flap won’t bring back the bar, nor the postage stamp and pocket map we bought. We got that far: the back of the day-lit bar, the third round of G&Ts. You bought. We got that faraway look, two divers in a sea. The third round of G&Ts; a few mean words. Look away. Two divers in a sea, no lamp or tether cords. A few mean words: the writing on the wall. No lamp or tether cords. Today is very small.
“DP.agp.11” is from “Double Portrait” (c) 2017 by Brittany Perham. The poem appears with the permission of W.W. Norton. All rights reserved.
Brittany Perham is the author of “Double Portrait,” “The Curiosities,” and, with Kim Addonizio, the chapbook “The Night Could Go in Either Direction.” She lives in San Francisco.