An is a description used to convey something experienced through any of the five senses
or any combination of senses.
IMAGES OF SIGHT
“your wallet on the bureau, open
And choking with bills,
Or your pockets turned inside out, hanging breathless as tongues”
—Gary Soto, from “The Morning They Shot Tony Lopez”
“The whiskers of the walrus
say to us
that there is no wind.”
—Norman Dubie, from “Hunter in an Arctic Midnight”
“Greatly shining,
The Autumn moon floats in the thin sky;
And the fish-ponds shake their backs and flash their dragon scales
As she passes over them.”
—Amy Lowell, “Wind and Silver”
“the white smoke of your breath
rising like a ghost.”
—Chris Tusa, from “Coma”
“police cars cockroach through the tunnel streets”
—Dennis Brutus, from “Nightsong: City”
“as the sun rose, pushing its pink spikes
through the slant of cornstalks,
through the fly-eyed mesh of the screen”
—Lisa Parker, from “Snapping Beans”
“Like someone blind,
you want to read the line
of your father’s jaw,
the story of his mouth”
—Christopher Bursk, from “Your Father Sunbathing”
“I remember how she rose with nothing on
but water, as the pool’s aqua mirror lapsed”
—Mark Irwin, from “Domnica”
“In the way he threw anything against the wall—
a radio, that wasn’t even ours,
a melon, once, opened like a head.”
—Diane Thiel, from “The Minefield”
“Iridescent, watery
prismatics: think abalone,
the wildly rainbowed
mirror of a soap-bubble sphere,
think sun on gasoline.”
—Mark Doty, from “A Display of Mackerel”
“faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away”
—Sharon Olds, from “Sex without Love”
“She reached the leather of her hand
over the bowl and cupped
my quivering chin; the slick smooth of her palm
held my face the way she held tomatoes
under the spigot, careful not to drop them”
—Lisa Parker, from “Snapping Beans”
“alleys where the streetlamps
stripe the pavement like venetian blinds.”
—Mark Doty, from “Noir”
“When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.”
—Mark Strand, from “Keeping Things Whole”
“pudgy white fingers
that shake out the intestines
like a hankie”
—Philip Levine, from “Animals are Passing from our Lives”
“in the pasture of dead horses,
roots of pine trees pushed through the pale curves of your ribs”
—Donald Hall, from “Names of Horses”
“Earl's car, one side crumpled like his nose,
would circle slowly around the pumps,
turn signal winking relentlessly.”
—Martín Espada, from “Rednecks”
IMAGES OF SOUND
“She climbs up the two flights of flagstone
stairs to 201-B, the spikes of her high heels
clicking like kitchen knives on a cutting board”
—Garrett Hongo, from “Yellow Light”
“the sound
of black oaks cracking
beneath clumps of snow.”
—Chris Tusa, from “Coma”
“Listen.
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp’d, break from the trees
And fall.”
—Adelaide Crapsey, “November Night”
IMAGES OF TOUCH
“You lay there, fastened to the tracks
and waiting, breathing like a bull,
your fingers lit at the tips like matches.
You waited for the thunder of wheel and bone,
the axles sparking, fire in your spine.”
—Jay Parini, from “Coal Train”
“Cut the heat—
plough through it,
turning it on either side
of your path.”
—H.D., from “Heat”
“When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.”
—Mark Strand, from “Keeping Things Whole”
IMAGES OF TASTE
“I met a blind girl who thought the sky
tasted like cold metal when it rained”
— Anita Endrezze, from “The Girl who Loved the Sky”
“The chalky flint and orange spark of struck concrete
floats in the air, tastes like metal, smells,
like the slow burn of hair on his electric clippers.”
—Michael Collier, from “The Barber”
IMAGES OF SMELL
“The chalky flint and orange spark of struck concrete
floats in the air, tastes like metal, smells,
like the slow burn of hair on his electric clippers.”
—Michael Collier, from “The Barber”
|
