Poem, "A pillow in the city" by Patricia Spears Jones

I find this poem by Patricia Spears Jones very beautiful and potent. I love how Jones uses the pillow as a metaphor to reveal the tragedy of social inequality and the rage and despair that results from it. "A pillow" brings to mind another poem that uses metaphor very powerfully, "Yellowjackets" by Yusef Komunyakaa (posted below Jones' "A pillow"). Read both and compare the subtle methods each of these brilliant poets uses to illustrate, by focusing on the specific and the concrete, a deeper truth that transcends the specific and reaches into the vast arena of our humanity. Enjoy!  A pillow in the city by Patricia Spears Jones  Ghostly falls from the fifteenth floor Feathers leaking/ the pillow speaking How the sleeper's nightly pounding Made the pillow yelp and moan Poor sleeper heard these comments Angered threw said pillow into An ugly summer night's air The pillow had little choice The sleeper's fists. The sleeper's mouth Not kind, not soft, always angry The sleeper always angry--even Dreaming the sleeper could not Stop rage, so the bed was a battlefield The pillow, an enemy. And now Said enemy slowly plunges towards The courtyard deflated, a feral squirrel Watches the fall, moves on towards The overflowing garbage bins, nose open Time to feast.

Copyright © 2013 by Patricia Spears Jones. Used with permission of the author.

Yellowjackets

BY YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA

When the plowblade struck   

An old stump hiding under   

The soil like a beggar’s   

Rotten tooth, they swarmed up   

& Mister Jackson left the plow   

Wedged like a whaler’s harpoon.   

The horse was midnight   

Against dusk, tethered to somebody’s   

Pocketwatch.  He shivered, but not   

The way women shook their heads   

Before mirrors at the five   

& dime—a deeper connection   

To the low field’s evening star.   

He stood there, in tracechains,   

Lathered in froth, just   

Stopped by a great, goofy   

Calmness.  He whinnied   

Once, & then the whole   

Beautiful, blue-black sky   

Fell on his back.

Poem copyright ©2001 by Yusef Komunyakaa, reprinted from “Pleasure Dome: New & Collected Poems, 1975-1999,” Wesleyan Univ. Press, 2001, by permission.