SONNET MORE LIKE SONIC THE HEDGEHOG *GOES REALLY FAST*

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/245516

Are All the Break-Ups in Your Poems Real?

By Aimee Nezhukumatathil

If by real you mean as real as a shark tooth stuck

in your heel, the wetness of a finished lollipop stick,

the surprise of a thumbtack in your purse—

then Yes, every last page is true, every nuance,

bit, and bite. Wait. I have made them up—all of them—

and when I say I am married, it means I married

all of them, a whole neighborhood of past loves.

Can you imagine the number of bouquets, how many

slices of cake? Even now, my husbands plan a great meal

for us—one chops up some parsley, one stirs a bubbling pot

on the stove. One changes the baby, and one sleeps

in a fat chair. One flips through the newspaper, another

whistles while he shaves in the shower, and every single

one of them wonders what time I am coming home.

First of all, this poem doesn't have 10 syllables per line. Shame, shame. It also doesn't rhyme. Is this even a sonnet? I found it under the sonnet category on the Poetry Foundation... It is 14 lines long, though, so it has that going for it. It doesn't have a rhyme scheme, so it can't really fit into either the quatrain or octave category in terms of rhyme, nor thematically. The first three lines deal with various 'real' things, with lines 4 through 9 having the speaker snark back to whoever is accusing her of detailing false break-ups in her poems. Said snark escalates until she's mockingly saying that she's married an entire neighborhood's worth of guys to write break-up poems about. Then, up until the volta that starts in the second half of line 13, the speaker is talking about the various things her husbands are hypothetically doing. 

Honestly, now that I'm looking at it, the exact meaning of the turn is up to interpretation. At first, I looked at it like, 'oh, she's out late because she's avoiding all of these lovers', and it just reinforces the fact that all of these break ups have been true, she was purposefully distancing herself from these men, but... you could also look at it as the men being concerned about her and wanting to spend time with her once she gets back from wherever it is that she is. Augh, I don't know. I thought I totally understood this poem when I first read it, but as I'm looking back over it I'm starting to feel kinda clueless. It's like... I dunno, like the speaker is desperately trying to support her claim that these men cared about her and were in a relationship with her (though it may not have been marriage) but she was still separated from them by some means? AH I DON'T KNOW. 

I chose this sonnet because it had an intriguing title, and it especially lured me in (pun intended HOHOHO) with the mention of shark teeth. Those first few lines are my favorite. They're really sensory and just... I dunno, they hit a good spot. This poem's basically just about the speaker (who I'm assuming is Aimee) calling her detractors out for thinking that the experiences she seems to have detailed in other poems regarding break-ups aren't false, that she has this whole world of men that she's split off from. I think what she's trying to get at is that you shouldn't doubt somebody else's experiences, particularly when they're so emotional and obviously so important to her, since she wrote many poems about them.