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Key Bridge
Key Bridge is a poem about race, sex, birth, and death set against the backdrop of Washington, D.C. Traveling through the city s present and past, its geography, its dream-world double, and its flora and fauna, Key Bridge examines the gap between Washington s day-to-day street-life and its status as a tourist spot and seat of the federal government. The city is presented as constantly shifting and evolving, a place that is impossible, finally, to pin down.
- GenresPoetry
Paperback
First published March 1, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 25, 2007
KEY BRIDGE by Ken Rumble - Carolina Wren Press /71pps/ 978-0-932112-54-5 / $14.95
A biographical look at the sometimes brutal seediness of D.C.; The bums by the river, under the bridge & waning. Streetlights & fog. Its murderers & lovers, nights & dreams. The river and of course (the bridge.
Descriptively divine, Rumble shows us everything.. as in “15.may.2000” where he is “fucking a woman the color of strawberries in ice/in an empty lot at the west end of Georgetown” -- “Awake & it’s 5 a.m. & .. We watch the city breath in/the yellow shining fog.”
There is a love for this city, a kinky, undiluted and undaunted love for its every nuance & nuisance. A visual appreciation for its blighted and bloated offerings. “16.may.2000/(aerial view” he shares that “a river winds/through a pancake middle/state like audio tape/off the reel” and you can see it, dark and murky. A tossed tire on its bank, condoms & beer bottles, maybe a corpse.
Then, with a slight departure, he gives us gentle humor in the following poem;
15.january.2001
somewhere
She stepped in the crook of
her mother’s knee
the hip, the shoulder, then flew
(I’m not explaining this right
Listen,
this is beautiful:
the body is a too;,
a wedge, scythe, ladder, brick, chair,
rope,shed, book, wheel, lathe, pen
--crook? the thief of her knee?
the cutpurse, skulldugger
or petty larcenist of her knee?
Minimus: two I’s, no pee
(hard life
A peek into his past is offered with “1.april.2001” as a young boy, he is watching night TV. Old enough to be left alone, yet young enough to be carried off to bed when his parents come home. A tasting of angst against them that falls wayside carried off “in the midst of their scents their wool/& velvet lost/in their there--”
and two more favorites, in entirety;
7.november.2002
You are here
is always true
except in love.
It’s an almost common thread, Jenny.. The love lost. The love remained.
Exemplified in the perfectly concise
“17.june.2000”
write what’s gone
These poems evoke an appreciation for the city lives. They see so much more, they feel so much harder, they live so damned poetically.
A biographical look at the sometimes brutal seediness of D.C.; The bums by the river, under the bridge & waning. Streetlights & fog. Its murderers & lovers, nights & dreams. The river and of course (the bridge.
Descriptively divine, Rumble shows us everything.. as in “15.may.2000” where he is “fucking a woman the color of strawberries in ice/in an empty lot at the west end of Georgetown” -- “Awake & it’s 5 a.m. & .. We watch the city breath in/the yellow shining fog.”
There is a love for this city, a kinky, undiluted and undaunted love for its every nuance & nuisance. A visual appreciation for its blighted and bloated offerings. “16.may.2000/(aerial view” he shares that “a river winds/through a pancake middle/state like audio tape/off the reel” and you can see it, dark and murky. A tossed tire on its bank, condoms & beer bottles, maybe a corpse.
Then, with a slight departure, he gives us gentle humor in the following poem;
15.january.2001
somewhere
She stepped in the crook of
her mother’s knee
the hip, the shoulder, then flew
(I’m not explaining this right
Listen,
this is beautiful:
the body is a too;,
a wedge, scythe, ladder, brick, chair,
rope,shed, book, wheel, lathe, pen
--crook? the thief of her knee?
the cutpurse, skulldugger
or petty larcenist of her knee?
Minimus: two I’s, no pee
(hard life
A peek into his past is offered with “1.april.2001” as a young boy, he is watching night TV. Old enough to be left alone, yet young enough to be carried off to bed when his parents come home. A tasting of angst against them that falls wayside carried off “in the midst of their scents their wool/& velvet lost/in their there--”
and two more favorites, in entirety;
7.november.2002
You are here
is always true
except in love.
It’s an almost common thread, Jenny.. The love lost. The love remained.
Exemplified in the perfectly concise
“17.june.2000”
write what’s gone
These poems evoke an appreciation for the city lives. They see so much more, they feel so much harder, they live so damned poetically.
December 22, 2008
Review forthcoming.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews