Analysis of Shrike
Je Woo Han 2000 (Seoul)
There are the bits and pieces of us,
deep past the green parts of Jamaica Plains,
in the first apartment
on the second floor, like some carcass
of an unfortunate thing,
strung about haphazardly, splayed out
in your old storage closet, dead;
probably, hopefully;
hiding, hidden, hung on the
branches of the IKEA bookshelf
with the wobbly third panel,
we lost the screw;
crudely spiked on the brambles of the
budget coat hangs, cluttered but empty,
just in a different way then
when we struggled to fill them;
the half-opened box of
Adventure Time band-aids,
four left in the packet, the
CVS had them for kids but
you insisted, left on the TV stand
where we pile our mail;
we never bothered with the silver screen,
nearly, at least, the lazy bone
always had company, abandoned
but never lonely, showing off
its coat of dust, five shows we’ve started,
six you probably finished on your own;
seven months together, the summer apart,
I would’ve never stayed, but the thorn
in my heart kept me in place, knowing
I would be butchered and flayed;
let me finish, let me just say:
we were both birds, we were both prey;
the first apartment on the second floor,
where the pieces of me lay,
just found new people today;
unlike you, unlike me,
my little shrike.
Let go.
Forget.
Scheme | AXXABXX CDXXXDCXX XXDXXX XEXXXEX XBXFF XFFCBXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 110101011 1101110101 001010 101011110 1101001 101100011 01110101 100100 1010110 1010101 10100110 1101 101101010 101110110 10010011 1110111 011011 010111 1100100 111111 1010110111 111101 1101010101 10110101 11100010 11010101 111111110 1110010111 10101001001 11101101 011110110 1111001 11101111 10111011 0101010101 1010111 1111001 011011 1101 11 01 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,311 |
Words | 270 |
Sentences | 4 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 7, 9, 6, 7, 5, 7 |
Lines Amount | 41 |
Letters per line (avg) | 24 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 165 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 38 |
About this poem
Somewhere in a Jamaica Plains apartment, I think I may have left my old iPhone charger.
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"Shrike" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 3 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/158792/shrike>.
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