Poem by Matina L. Stamatakis

'Love Me Nots' by Matina L. Stamatakis, published in elimae.

Love Me Nots

A war of flowers
left your palm

and curled southward;
a burnt ray of Technicolor kamikazes.

With distance I pictured them
stretched out,

thought I heard
dirges, Ave Maria,

whisper them

back into the winds,

teaching girls to dance
who have had no prior experience.

Dripped between the flushed pulp of toes,
my marionettes were tight
muscle mouths and hot bubblegum ooze,

faint blurs of sweat

(how they twirled questions and popped,
tongues out as reddened
embryos expelled from womb).

Into the light they wrapped hastily around nerve and bone.

A war of flowers
left your palm

The image that the first stanza incites in me is of someone throwing a bouquet of flowers back at someone else -- violently, which the tone of 'war' indicates. I would be happy thinking this, if it wasn't for the title, which -- aside from the child's game with petals -- brings to mind a wedding; a bouquet bringing 'war' when the bridesmaids flurry to catch it when thrown. There's an obvious juxtaposition, even antithesis, in 'war' and 'flowers'.

And that the title is without hyphenation (Stamatakis isn't one of those writers ignorant of this integral aspect of grammar) hints at a pun with 'love you lots' -- rather than the love-me-not itself -- and therefore 'not love me'.

and curled southward;
a burnt ray of Technicolor kamikazes.

The curling now brings to mind petals more so than full flowers. While -- if i'm right, that is -- using petals in the first stanza would be more accurate, it wouldn't be as effective as the alliterative 'r's at the end of each word. Notice the alliteration of the 'w's, also.

That the flowers have time to curl indicates distance from the ground. That they are then burnt connotes sun, and therefore higher ground than originally thought -- perhaps a mountain. Notice the alliteration of the 'd's and 'k's, as well as the successive curling of the tongue with 'flowers', 'left', 'palm', and of course 'curled'. 'Kamikazes' furthers the register of war and thus tone of hostility.

With distance I pictured them
stretched out,

What's already implied is now solidified with 'distance'. Notice, again, the alliteration of the 't's.

thought I heard
dirges, Ave Maria,

whisper them

back into the winds,

So now we have death ('war'), suicide ('kamikazes'), and songs for the dead ('dirges'), and a synchronised letting go.

It's here that i find the first hiccup in the piece. I don't think these two latter lines are deserving of their own stanzas, a layout that isn't repeated and renders the structure less (visually) cohesive. I don't think either line needs or commands emphasis, this being the only reason i can think of separating them. Though considering the random line formatting i've experienced with elimae myself, this may not be any fault of the writer's*.

teaching girls to dance
who have had no prior experience.

My syntactic approach here would've been: 'teaching girls who have had no prior experience to dance.' Though with the poem's terse lines and line breaks, a brisker 'with no prior experience', cutting down 'who have had', would've worked better.

my marionettes were tight

Do marionettes connote control and higher powers?

how they twirled questions and popped

Notice the register/reference of 'twirled' to dancing.

faint blurs of sweat

Notice how the 'dripped' is now linked with 'sweat'.

(how they twirled questions and popped,
tongues out as reddened
embryos expelled from womb).

This is my favourite line of the poem. In a piece screaming with fruity word play and juxtaposition, the technique here is subtle and genius. Twirled questions and popped bubblegum/tongues out, like innocent kids -- then cut to an abortion. 'Popped' is also glaringly interchangeable and punning on popping a girl's cherry, the first stanza -- as well as the words 'southward' and 'stretched out' -- now coming to mean more than what was initially thought (i.e., deflowered). And it's here that we get the feeling that the sweating isn't refering to the dancers, but possibly the marionettes -- perhaps then indicating the use of a comma in the line before it, and not an expected full stop.

Into the light they wrapped hastily around nerve and bone.

The final movement of the piece, and an apt dénouement ending a very pointed and visual build-up (of both content and speed). If it weren't for 'into the light', i'd see this as an image of the post-abortion girl holding herself, her body shaken/traumatised to the core ('nerve and bone'). Though 'into the light', indicating death, points more toward the aborted embryo, and how it is holding itself, showing in its human reaction that it is (or was) very much alive. A hint of anti-abortion commentary, or is the wrapping merely the doctors putting a towel around the aborted foetus? Knowing Stamatakis, probably both.

Look, now, at how the prior 'flushed pulp' comes into play. And now that the poem moved to virgins, a reasoning for the odd syntactic approach i mentioned might be that the lack of experience isn't refering to their dancing skills at all, and therefore needs to be separated and not streamed into one.

The entire piece is a juxtaposition of the beautiful and the ugly, which complements the content.

Finally, let's go full circle with the title and ending, and the image of the marionette: a used/controlled girl who's a virgin and has no experience, used by someone who didn't love her, and resulting in an abortion. Or, if the embryo is holding itself, perhaps it's him/her that feels unloved?


(*As such, i assumed those triple spaces weren't intentional, and so removed them.)