Week #11—Sign Inventory

"Shore" (pp. 82-87 of Persons Unknown)

            by Jake Adam York

Narrative in second person voice

Sounds dialogical but “you” cannot speak back

multiple repetitions of “water” reinforces “That water’s everywhere”

“touch” or “touched” appears three times

negatives infiltrate the syntax:  “no ward, no neighborhood…can’t be touched,” “where you’d never arrive,” “that yard which is not here anymore,” “There are no answers. / There is no one to ask.” “but no one stops,” “but not a killer,” “leaving nothing but a name.”

use of diminishing descriptors for victims:  “epitaphs, only names, dates,” “burned on an inch of film,” “forgotten mile,” “an alleyway,” “an empty lot”

Speaker’s forensic-like tone turns philosophical:  “There are no answers. / There is no one to ask.”

Poem’s tone sounds fatalistic through use of verbs of finality:  “as if the line had slipped”; “”you are burned on an inch of film”; “where the flood has grazed”; “a place even the maps might forget”; “where you last touched the earth”; “where you rose up, / Biblical”; “called you home again”; “abandoned as a name”; “collapsed under its weight”; “this field…that has forgotten everything”; “the steel drawers click shut.”

assonance/alliterations in “spill of a city”; “slipped through some scar”; “the steam of afternoon, / the smell of everything”; “slumped….sleep”; “sniper stood”; “reaching…rubbled”; “wells your walking’s made”; “watch as the water.”