Women Writing Project: Round 2 from Prague

Root

noun
1. a part of the body of a plant that develops, anchoring the plant and absorbing nutriment and moisture.
2. the embedded or basal portion of a hair, tooth, nail, nerve, etc.
3. the source or origin of a thing: The love of money is the root of all evil.
4. an offshoot or scion.
5. Mathematics: a quantity that, when multiplied by itself a certain number of times, produces a given quantity
6. Grammar.: a morpheme that underlies an inflectional or derivational paradigm
7. roots: the personal relationships, affinity for a locale, habits, and the like, that make a country, region, city, or town one's true home: He lived in Tulsa for a few years, but never established any roots there.
8. Music: the lowest tone of a chord when arranged as a series of thirds; the fundamental.
9. Machinery: (in a screw or other threaded object) the narrow inner surface between threads. Compare crest (def. 18), flank (def. 7).
–verb (used without object)
10. to become fixed or established.
–verb (used with object)
11. to pull, tear, or dig up by the roots (often fol. by up or out); to extirpate; exterminate; remove completely (often fol. by up or out): to root out crime.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Round 2 from Prague

Death shakes his hourglass at noon.
The cobblestone maze sways with accents.

I lose direction.
Lightning threads the sky,

a sea of marionettes float in slow motion.
Hollow limbs rooted to tiny strings

and those heavy sleeping heads
condemned to a smile or frown.

Voices wash over,
words I will never understand.

An anonymous love swells and empties
for everything I do not know.

A string tugs memory, wrist.
My story keeps me treading the same air.