Poetry at the Post: Terzanelle Thursday with Charles O. Hartman

Terzanelle by Charles O. Hartman

In Pandemonium the vases stand
Blue-venied as breasts, still bloomed as finger bowls,
Ready to hold the orchids of the hand.

NAPOWRIMO’s prompt for Day 16 of National Poetry Month is to write a terzanelle—a cross between a villanelle and terza rima. Think Dante on steroids. Here’s what I have so far.

Delhi
—After Octavio Paz

Monkeys with red asses scream. Crackling rain,
the clumps of people and animals on the ground.
God, men and beasts eat from the same plate.

Neither here nor there through that frontier of doubt,
I am one. I am not. I walk among the images,
the clumps of people and animals on the ground.

To be continued…