Love Letter
by Laura Drell

What I said was tomatoes,  but what I meant  was broccoli  because
broccoli look like trees, not like these trees, exactly, because broccoli
trunks are green, which does not say much  because these trees don’t
have brown trunks because they aren’t colored in yet;  it’s not exactly
unfinished,  just  creative;  not being created exactly,  but just  that the
creativity of the painter  is bearing down  upon the trees  and the trees
serve as the object  of the creative mind,  because in  being the object
of something  there is a  sense of  usedness,  as in letters,  for example:
the object  of a letter  may not  feel used,  exactly,  but rather  pressed
upon, if that is, the letter is a love letter,  and if, by chance,  that love is
unrequited,  the unrequiter may  feel  used and  pressed  like ice cream
into a  claustrophobic  cone to be  eaten  on,  like a tree  smeared with
brown paint,  or of course green,  only to be  looked at,  like a tomato
being chopped  up into a sauce  and then slurped,  in the same way the
unrequiter may  feel used,  like something  has been  stolen  from his or
her person,  though not literally,  from his or her person  like a  toe nail
or a finger,  but from his or her selfhood like privacy or respect,  which
happens  when  the  letter is less  than  flattering,  not that  a love  letter
would be  outright  rude,  unless of course  that is  the  reason  why the
love is  unrequited,  but if the  letter makes  demands  or assertions the
unrequiter  may  feel  used  as  an  object  of  abuse,  not  abuse  as  in
physical,  but abuse as in negligence  though not negligence of care but
negligence  as  in  laziness   to   respect  the  unrequiter  or  laziness  to
discover  why  that  person  is  worthy  of respect  because  respect is
always  necessary  whether  the  object  be  art  work  and  one  must
respect the trees, trees colored in or not,  colored green, or brown, or
red for  that  matter,  or whether  the subject  be  food,  as in  the olive
which  must  have  its soul  extracted before it  goes into  the salad,  or
cucumbers which sit in vinegar  until they are old and have bunions,  or
tomatoes  which are  served up in  every kind of dish:  and in that way
the tomato  is worthy of respect and  represents the ultimate  usedness
though it may be questioned whether  the tomato is served up willingly
or whether  it finds itself  being used merely as an object  for  the knife,
which is why  at first  I said  tomato  when what I meant  was broccoli.










by Laura Drell

Circumferential explosive
distributive brown, distributive lumpy grey, distributive melancholic fat
unreachable reminiscent green.

If this poem were on an electronic reader, the reader would click *HERE* for
several images offering possible interpretations of *DISTRIBUTIVE LUMPY
FAT.*
       IMAGE ONE: lumpy fat in roast ham or chicken.
                   [for percentages of fat in various cuts of ham click *HERE.*]
       IMAGE TWO: Brown bicycles lay left alone, rusting on red dirt.
       IMAGE THREE: [Link broken. Please try again later.]

Circumferential vacant
vague white equine, equivocal red strung, stingy vacuous distribution.

Click *VACANT* to see the *FARM* dirt inflicted, windows only holes
with wood trim.
       Farm –(n.)  land used to raise crops or livestock such as the white
       horse tied to the blown-in window trim vacillating between
       abandonment and
Click *RED* to see the handkerchief still strung to dry or left to testify
premeditated              Penny,
the horse is called Penny. Says so above the stable gate but no one under
because wind blows the red too precautiously, the bit of red handkerchief
and brown dirt and brown house and brown trees and white horse preparing
solitary expiration.

distributive [displacement]
definitive [deconstruction]
disillusioned [disaster]

Click *DISPLACEMENT* for example: child displaced from family through
legal intervention.
       [Grammar note: DIS/DE: an undoing, the way one may deconstruct a
       family one member at a time, a building one board at a time, a pie
       cherry by cherry by cherry.]
Click *DISILLUSIONED DISASTER* for a reader’s blog discussing the
illusion of a red handkerchief left on the line.
For Spanish: Haz click *AQUI*

distributive [displacement] [becoming] distributive
distributive [deconstruction] resonant.

Click *RESONANT*
       Article: The Lasting Implications of A Man on A Red Horse.
                   Click *RED HORSE* for painting of a brunette gentleman
                   clandestinely
                           Click *CLANDESTINELY* Merriam Webster:
                           Clandestine: adj. held or conducted with secrecy in the
                           middle of broad daylight despite the fact that the horse
                           called Penny waits without water and watches the
                           clandestiner abscond into the trees.
                                   Click *TREES*: Ponderosa Pines;  provider of
                                   shade for the piglets caked in brown dirt and
                                   brown sun under the red stiff like dead.
                                   Click *ABSCOND* for an image of the white
                                   and whitening of the cow skull on the barn roof.




                       ____________________________


Laura Drell is a poet living and working in Austin, Texas, where she is
a student at Concordia University Texas.
  


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Apple Valley Review:
A Journal of Contemporary
Literature
 

ISSN 1931-3888

Volume 5, Number 2
(Fall 2010)

Copyright © 2010
by Leah Browning, Editor.  

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published in the
Apple
Valley Review
are retained
by the individual authors
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