Woah Nelly

[butterflydreaming]

 I kept finding references to "the envelope sonnet" but I wasn't sure which I had meant. Just now I found it. February 2005 paper journal. It's... wow.

an Envelope Sonnet

“Sealed”

 

A feather touch quills each soft, careful line

Each letter caressed with slow, conscious care

Adorned in serif, but with meaning bare

Though posed for you behaved, contained, confined

 

Behind the words, a hushed ardor retreats;

Beneath each phrase, my roiling hungers sink;

My uninvited longing sighs as ink

in strokes across the grain of smooth, calm sheets

 

Restraint is in this poem I write for you

That won’t be copied in digital font,

But do you guess how my desires rage

When my tongue slides along the strip of glue

And tastes the defined edge of this sharp want

Caught in the folding of a paper cage?

 

2/14/2005