Penny

by Nanook

in Completed Works

Penny

I came across a penny
with the portrait of a King
all Roman Nose and empty
eyes; softly chiselled jawline.

I paused, and thought, and wondered
what a long-dead King would think
of being dropped, shuffled, and
damply devalued in those
mountains upon mountains of change.

I considered catching one—
a King, I mean—preserving
some sad soul in copper, zinc
greasy people's fingerprints.

I decided against it
on the basis of one fact:
you can’t just be born royal
(so he didn’t want the job.)

left it—
left him—
walked away.

Description

Oct 15th 2009
Tags:
king penny
Views:
18
Comments:
2
Score:
1
Favorites:
0
And, in the tradition of other wholly irrelevant people, I wrote about an old penny. A greasy, dirty, grimy, horrible penny (from Canada, no less!) that is probably infected with AIDS or something.

But it's a nice poem, eh?

Comments

mercury yume Says:

it is a nice poem, very instantaneous, you've managed to capture a sense of broad awareness within a tiny moment, that seems very clever to me. My brain is trying to turn this into something more than what it is, always does with poetry. But it's just a story about a penny, not an allegory for the economic dynamics of imperial societies. I assume.

Side note: I like the assonance of 'eyes' and 'jawline', even if it's not direct, just started the poem off really nicely for me.

1 Reply

Fitos Says:

In your poems, the driving words is the vocabulary and the every-day events in them. I wrote about a collossal thing in the Minister's Cow; you write about a penny. I doubt I could do that without epicizing it. Yes, I like creating words like ol' Shakey did. Anyhow, this poem strikes me as being one made in boredom. Though, again, this poem has very good parts in it. Thus I shall divide this comment in two (three, if you include this one)ö.

Things that were shrude/clever/witty/had to do with sex, drugs, lust, nudes, and extortion.

I like the first stanza as a whole, but especially the last two lines of it:


"all Roman Nose and empty
eyes; softly chiselled jawline".


The former sounds so contemptuous that I just love it (somewho the tone of "all Roman Nose" just beggs me to think of it as such). The word "empty", due to the line change between it and "eyes", obviously now gets a double meaning where it designates to the Roman nose and then to the eyes. Empty eyes, I presume, are due to the lack of enough precision in the making of the coin: after all, I guess it would be difficult to make the eyes quite life like in a penny coin. Of course, it probably also refers to lack of emotion (or to extreme emotion, such as anger caused by not "want(ing) the job").

The semi-colon brings an odd break to the line, but a break well deserved; I feel the person in the poem, looking at the king, notices the well-featured face. Perhaps a slight fancy is aroused here (mayhap later shown in the third stanza, when the person in the poem is deciding wether to take him home or not [in the form of the penny]). Also, "chiselled" refers to the craftmanship of either the coin or the possible statue that was used as a reference for the coin. So, nice use of the richness of the english language here.

I love the fact that in the third stanza you didn't consider catching the penny, but rather the king and the penny just seems to be the way to hold him put. Though, I think this is the best part of the poem


"preserving
some sad soul in copper, zinc
greasy people's fingerprints."


This just clearly shows your beautiful way of handling every-day events. Preserving him in not only the penny (copper, zink), but in whatever comes with the penny (as if it all was what made it what it was; you weren't going to wash it perhaps?), such as the "greasy people's fingerprints." is just a bloody innovating idea to me.



Things that were not related to the above mentioned

Now, correct me if I am wrong, for I am not good with the english way of reading iambic lines etc. BUT I feel that the first and the second stanza and the third stanza have such jumps of rythm between them (much as my Minister's Cow has between the first and the second stanza) that it feels a bit jarring.

Ok, now the fourth stanza....


"I decided against it
on the basis of one fact:
you can’t just be born royal
(so he didn’t want the job.)"


You can't just be born royal? Erm... what? And how does this have to do with him not wanting the job? I would think you might have meant "you're just born royal". Then all would make sense. BUT perhaps I do not see the underlaying wisdom as I am just recuperating from my 38 degrees celcius fever

Fift stanza; Idea good, but perhaps you could not say it in such obvious terms. Perhaps (a bad idea, but somewhat guiding) you could have a long pause [however you might want to implicate that in the poem] and then go on to remembering the shopping list or some such. Make us see you walk a few steps toward the supermarket and let us see your back from the point-of-view of the penny.




That is all for now (too sick).

Keep the writing coming!

1 Reply