DDCPoetry

Poem found here:  "Burlesque" by Amaud Jamaul Johnson Written in quatrians, the poem undresses this anonymous hymn.  The shift in tone throughout the poem creates a sense of awkwardness, but also transformative as well. "Watch the fire undress him / how flame fingers each button,"  Note how intimate the first two lines are and how the metaphor of the fire has more action versus the "him" with inaction -- the fire is the one, "rolls back his collar, unzips him / without sweet talk or mystery."  Now the fire has anthropomorphized action, but also intent from the speaker.  The idea of "sweet talk" and "mystery" are gone.  There is this singular action of undresses to undress him.  And what does completely undressing him expose:      See how the skin begins to gather      at his ankles, how it slips into      the embers, how it shimmers      beneath him, unshapen, iridescent The body of the male i...