The Orange Bottle by Joshua Mehigan

Stop.
          Run.
                  Go.
Read.
         This.
                Poem.

Joshua Mehigan's "The Orange Bottle" is just fantastic.

It's got everything I've been calling for since I started this blog. It's narrative, long enough to satisfy, and plays with sound in some wonderful ways:

For instance, listen to the way Mehigan changes sound in this stanza near the poem's end:

In the car away from that place,

the family had a pleasant chat.

He seemed fine again, and humble,

though his speech was oddly flat.

The c's, ch's, t's and f's throughout--except the c's being replaced with h's in the third line--which reinforce the humility (which Mehigan's poem posits as restricted humanity, at least for our subject) and the t's being entirely absent--that is, the only hard sound in that third line is the "g" of again, which is hardly cacophonic while all the other "oddly flat" lines have far more displeasing sounds.

Utterly delightful craftsmanship, I must say.

Keep it up, Poetry, and I just might renew my subscription, even if all you give me is rejection (and the occasional commentary on my reviews. . .).