About the Poems - TM
About the Poems
by Tiffany Midge "Horns” has endured many incarnations throughout the years and still remains unfinished. It began as an unfinished short story, then an unfinished one-woman play, now a series of unfinished so-called poems. It is a gothic fairy tale, a coming-of-age story and essentially a metaphor for my own life: I too am the daughter of a brilliant, coo-coo, and domineering father, and in addition, I am of two cultures, Indian and white—disparate and at war with the other. Ruth is a hybrid, a girl at a loss to exactly pinpoint her identity as was I during adolescence. And as with any decent true to life fairy tale, there is evil to contend with or at the very least reconcile. People have told me the beloved author Neil Gaiman (who I’ve never read) wrote a novel about the daughter of the anti-Christ). Recently, I discovered the son of Stephen King published a novel with the title Horns – a sort of Kafkaesque odyssey of a man experiencing his own metamorphosis. These poems are just a sampling of a larger narrative. I should finish it. “Zombie Escape Route.” What can I say? It’s become the proverbial elephant in the room. It just needed to be said. “Ghoul Interrupted” is a commentary on possession movies, which both unsettle and fascinate me. The latest addition to this female pre-adolescent demonic possession oeuvre was Paranormal Activity I and II, and The Last Exorcism. Of course they’ll never live up to the original, despite advances in CGI, nothing could ever live up to that, however I remain fixated on the attempts nonetheless. “Divination Map for Lost Boys.” The prompt for this poem was Poetry Northwest’s poetry contest requiring maps as a theme. I sent it in. It wasn’t a keeper, but I liked it anyway. “An Appeal to the Reckoner of Sand” was originally conceived as one of those question poems: What if . . . It reminds me of Dr. Suess’ Horton Hears a Who, which is probably a better idea because most anything having to do with mathematics or physics or even philosophy overwhelms me, so I’m at a loss as to why I would go in this particular direction. Except to say, it wasn’t until the fifth or sixth draft that it quite clearly occurred to me what all that damn sand and counting was really about. For me.