Things Are Disappearing Here
by Kate Northrup
Things are disappearing here: a pale light
spreads over the sea beneath which
X drops, falls back to the blind
silences, to the undeveloped
secret fish which have been abandoned there
and grow vicious.
And things are disappearing
also in the country. Already the roads
twist into the distance, rise
into columns of smoke
and in the parking lots of a discount store,
a sedan explodes. Then it happens that our fathers
fly off, a whole flotilla fills the sky,
their jackets and ties flapping
like the pages of books the[y] never read. Our fathers
are disappearing yet they are not
ashamed. See, all things go: at the edge of the city, dogs run off,
they tear themselves from their lines
and in the middle of the night,
from neighborhoods more trenchant than ours, we hear their barks,
those clear openings that come to us
over the schoolyard, the homes boarded up, and then
in through the windows. The sound of the missing dogs
for a while survives, and that is just enough
to cheer us.
Sign Analysis:
Confessional poem in first person plural.
Every line enjambed
Structured in eleven stanzas in a format of two couplets, three triplets, one single line, three triplets, two couplets. Reflect the poem’s theme of things diminishing into disappearance, but then it rebuilds “just enough to cheer us,” implying that if everything looks normal, all will be well.
The second lines in stanzas 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 10 indent while the only the third line in stanza 4 indents.
Several ‘i’ sounds at the end of lines, specifically lines 1, 3, 9, 13, 18, and 19.
Repetition of “us” at the ends of lines 21 and 25.
Use of italics for mantra “things are disappearing here”—except in the title
Like vowel sounds in “blind silences” and “just enough to cheer us.”
Alliteration in “spreads over the sea,” “back to the blind,” “flotilla fills the sky,” and “clear openings that come to us.”
Printing error of “the” for “they” in line 15.
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