Michigan looking like a mitten is a cliché for those in the know, living in or around the state, but I think it’s fine here. Anyway, she’s explaining to someone who doesn’t know in the poem. (Though it is impossible to look at the state and not think that.) My family’s house back in the states (in Toledo, where I grew up) is about 4 blocks away from Michigan—used to run up there to get fireworks (illegal in Ohio) when I was a kid. And I lived in Ann Arbor for a while when I was in my 20s. Great, great city, Ann Arbor.
Anyway, I like the poem quite a bit, Mark. Just some thoughts, fwiw. Mitten is nice in the first stanza as she is handing him a pit (stone). For me, that image of Michigan heightened the moment of her giving the speaker the stone—focusing in on her hand. Love that, intended or not.
Stanza 2 is beautiful. I, too, had to look up “bladderwrack.” What a fantastic word—like something from the Jabberwock’s world.
I stumbled over “Dive down the sofa, tobacco-stained fingers,” because “tobacco-stained” feels like something found from the past, but but after looking at it again, I think this is probably just me. (I have just recently lost those stains on my fingers...)
I love that the stone seems to hang over the poem and the possibility of growth vs. the lack of growth. You have such a wonderful voice in your work, Mark, and that is true here as well.
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