Becca Menon

 

***

I’ve learned deceptiveness since he moved in:

How to distract him from a brutal rage or try

To trick his jealous need for all of my

Attention — yet defend him when I grin

Contentedly for loved-ones who suspect

 His secret violence; to take the blame

 For something that I’ve done or some neglect

 That sets him off, and hide the sticky shame

 I feel for letting him destroy my life.

 And while it never stops confounding me

 To realize that it’s true I am his wife,

 There’s one thing that I face with honesty:

 Because it was by illness we were wed,

 This demon, Pain, will always share my bed.

 ***

Becca Menon (1958― ) of New York City writes formal, often narrative poetry that makes use of both received and nonce forms. Her verse novel A Girl and Her Gods (2008) led poet Katha Pollitt to declare “No poet I know of writes anything like this ― Becca dances to a tune of her own Panpipes, and the reader follows, entranced,” while Herb Leibowitz, Editor of Parnassus, wrote that her “language is supple and nuanced {and} her sleight-of-hand as a story-teller keeps the reader from worry about what technical devices she uses;…” Poet Mark Rudman, editor of Pequod, noted that her poetry is “playful, philosophical, and subversive.” Also a translator and prize-winning author of nonsense, Becca has works appearing in numerous print and on-line journals, both nationally and internationally. To learn more, please visit BeccaBooks.com

***

This sonnet is pre-published with the permission of the Editor-in-chief from:

 Richard Vallance, editor-in-chief. The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes: Anthology of sonnets of the early third millennium = Le Phénix renaissant de ses cendres : Anthologie de sonnets au début du troisième millénaire. Friesen Presse, Victoria, B.C., Canada. © 2013. approx. 240 pp. ISBN Hardcover: 978-1-4602-1700-9 Price: $28.00 Paperback: 978-1-4602-1701-6 Price: $18.00 e-Book: 978-1-4602-1702-3 Price: TBA

300 sonnets & ghazals in English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese & Persian.

30 sonnets in this anthology are to be pre-published by our permission in Poetry Life & Times (UK) which has exclusive sole rights prior to the publication of the anthology itself.

Readers may also contact Richard Vallance, Editor-in-Chief, at: vallance22@gmx.com for further information.

http://vallance22.hpage.com/