Sonnet after Sylvia Plath’s “Metaphors”

This house of fine fruit, melon
the yeast tendrils
I’ve eaten
a two train riddle 

boarded new-minted apples
in a loaf’s bag
with O syllables: 
off, on. No big —

getting fat, in calf-cow stage
I’m a rising nine, 
strolling in red timbers — 
I’m fine 

means
still green.


Metaphors

by Sylvia Plath

I’m a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf’s big with its yeasty rising.
Money’s new-minted in this fat purse.
I’m a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I’ve eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there’s no getting off.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s