My attempt at writing in the "sestina" form:
AVOWAL by Jason Powell
Joulietta, I have a confession to make... a declaration too crucial to divulge via e- mail, as I’d originally planned. I must say this to your face, because I think we owe that to each other. Here goes. Joulietta... Have you ever asked yourself sometimes why
I buy you little presents sometimes? Why I occasionally phone you for no particular reason ("Hey, how’s it going, just wanted to see what you were up to...")? Or why your boyfriend claims he has seen me standing outside his window, out of the corner of his eye,
making threatening hand gestures? (I also produce guttural noises sometimes.) Why now and then at night you’ve heard, "Oh, Joulietta, oh yes, Joulietta!" coming from your driveway, then ran outside to find that someone had e- jaculated on your car windshield? Perhaps you
have wondered about the postcards you receive periodically, with the cute messages on them: "I Luv U"; "U R 2 Good 2 B True" (tee hee!); "I Dream Of U Sometimes"; "Why Won’t U Let Me Drink Of Your Sacred Cunt? A Single Sip, I Ask No More Of Thee, O
High Demon Priestess Of My Captive Soul, O Virgin, O Whore, O Mother"; "I Miss U"; etc. I imagine you didn’t know what to make of it, eh? "Me, a priestess?" you no doubt chuckled. "And a ‘high demon priestess’ at that?" Sometimes, why, I’ll bet you were so tickled by it all that you e-
mitted a high-pitched "eeeeeee!" of delight! But your delight was tempered, oh yes, always tempered (even overwhelmed sometimes) by curiosity. Who was sending you these finely wrought phrases? Aye, and who was jizzing on your Chevrolet?
I’ll ask God, during my most self-loathsome times, why He never gave me the strength to tell you the truth – until now, when I have already decapitated you with a garden hoe.
|