Hamilton, Jeff

English

Denison University

Exile Volume 29 Number 1 Article 8 1982 Speaking To You through Derision Jeff Hamilton Denison University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.denison.edu/exile  Part of the Creative Writing Commons Recommended Citation Hamilton, Jeff (1982) "Speaking To You through Derision," Exile: Vol. 29 : No. 1 , Article 8. Available at: https://digitalcommons.denison.edu/exile/vol29/iss1/8 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English at Denison Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Exile by an authorized editor of Denison Digital Commons. Speaking to You Through the Derision I am locked a_round your n:,orning sleep scent, girdling my pillow, squeezing mY eyes closed Imagining these words , after you've left. And I sense so much potency for love in my twenties -my min<;! leaps to warnings I want to give my children not to doubt or abort their riddled emotions nor accept quickly this abeyance we so often call perspective. I lie dreamily awake sometimes cenain that if we must fail at love it must be fully, awkwardly, or not at all. And still from this I gain no rest. You , who have faced my revache and made death of it: In some less poetic moment I became aware too late, thinking thoughtless words, lapping at t~e pain lovingly saying: "I understand me. No one understands me." The taste of myself dry, and familiar, pale and saltless, Our two human bodies knee-jerking, senseless . And if love can make us better people then paradoxes are forgivable and memory only dormant with dreams, releasing out waking nights together; your flesh and our failures are not the mutually exclusive property of some plastic bag, rolling away from another tragedy, Horrors too easy to imagine and forget . 0 woman I have loved -We must talk of death until there is no more Death to fall from -And we may speak through the derision to some moment when we awake and find we are not the people we expected to be. Jeff Hamilton 29 

Speaking To You through Derision

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Speaking To You through Derision

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