Braided Double-Cross

A braid appears to be two cords repeatedly crossing each other. In reality, though, the pattern conceals a third twist. Which one surfaces now? Which one is concealed?
As promises and dreams of lifelong commitment unravel in these poems of contemporary passion and deception – even self-deception – each coil of hair comes to represent the beloved, the narrator, and sometimes a previously unperceived rival. When the twisting takes shape as an aching triangle, the dialogue  reaching into childhood, history, geography, career aspirations, and the future  frequently invokes an absent, silent third participant, a recognition of the inequality emerging in the core relationship itself. Details of confession mount quietly. Truth becomes unbearable. At times a scream is silent. The braid ultimately becomes a whip. As Diane Wakoski has observed, “Rapunzel and the witch were always one / and the same.”
Like sunlight reflecting from the beloved’s fleece, a radiance is woven through these poems, along with the conflict and individual secrecy.
In form, these pieces are modeled loosely after Ted Berrigan’s sonnets, freed from iambic pentameter and cast into an American voice. They are as far from Petrarchan, Spencerian, and Shakespearean formalities as the content itself differs from those idealized expressions of fidelity and love.
To cite Berrigan’s phrase, these poems rub belly-to-belly in white heat – or its loss.