the art of the metaphor
met·a·phor /ˈmedəˌfôr,ˈmedəˌfər/ (noun): a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable.
Whether or not it’s true, I always think of metaphors as caffeinated similes: braver, bolder, rougher. [thing] is not *like* [other thing]. [thing] *is* [other thing]. And, because it’s not really possible for [thing] to be [another, very distinct thing], metaphors feel bold, connoting a confidence carried by the text’s speaker.
Because I am committed to exuding top-energy at all times, I am a big fan of metaphors and use them often. I get excited when I encounter them in poems, fiction, or plays. Here are a few that I’ve held onto.
My mother’s / eyes are forgotten vases of irises.
-Rachel Eliza Griffiths, “The Dead will Lead You”
My mouth a pomegranate split open, a grenade with its loose pin.
-Paul Tran, “Elegy with My Mother’s Lipstick”
My heart / is a fist of barbed wire.
-Analicia Sotelo, “South Texas Persephone”
Her arms kudzu around my middle.
-Joy Priest
The alcove of your arm / has become my favorite room / for sleep.
-Emily Jungmin Yoon, “American Dream”
My voice is a gold streetlamp corroded by ghost moths.
-Rachel Eliza Griffiths, “My Dress Hangs There”
The smoke is a wet quilt / hung out in morning.
-KA Hays, “Pastoral”
I felt a slight touch, / her hand—a tendril of fog—
-Gloria Anzaldua, “Interface”
Two shivering animals, my hands / huddle into each other, wring themselves red.
-Jessica Jacobs, “When My Job is to Wait”
Childhood is a torn animal / left out of doors.
-Rachel Eliza Griffiths, “Home, A Photograph”
…how her eyes were dull stones slouching in her face.
-Cameron Awkward Rich, “Essay on Crying in Public”
My sister is feral hydrangea / rioting all summer, another / bastard daughter / rotting the family vine.
-Sara Henning, “For My Sister, Miscarried”
Mornings broke open / like fresh eggs, cracked and spilled into a blue bowl of sky.
-Jesse Graves, “Bayou Storm”
Of course / I am the cat & its neck-severed bird.
-Ruth Baumann, “Dear Better Self”
Hope, perhaps, is a horse / bareback and aimless in a field of hay— / it twitches its ears toward promises / gone gossamer.
-JP Dancing Bear, “Prodigal”
Your voice a broken shell I cut my ear / against.
-Lisa Fay Coutley, “Dear Mom—”
Joy / streaks across the sky, a star / burning out.
-Ellen Bass, “Evolution”
Silence, // our shroud, no longer softens hunger.
-Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, “Facts on the Ground”
I lose faith / that each season will arrive at this address, / a rustic trust we clutched like loose / change in our pockets, a vine on a cliff.
-Joannie Stangeland, “When the Sky Does Not River”
A single white bird // cuts a silver scar across the sun.
-Carlos Andres Gomez, “Inertia”
And I knew when I entered her I was / high wind in her forests hollow.
-Audre Lorde, “Love Poem”
“April’s an umbrella of want.”
-Susanna Childress, “Rooted, They Grip Down and Begin to Awaken”
The tongue is a cadence, after all, is thick / in the mouth. // I used to sit with my brother as he drank, // as his words became antlers / or dark blood or unwilling gardens.
-Doug Ramspeck, “Winter Auguries”
The cloth of morning / is a little torn.
-Sarah Stickney, “The Westin, Annapolis”
The dark is a silk sheet / settling around us.
-Benjamin Morris, “Palindrome”
The past is a blood clot lodged inside your lung.
-Cathy Lihn Che, “Home Video”
Loving you is a warm room.
-Marge Piercy, “A Cold and Married War”
My hands are flames seeking you.
-Amy Lowell, “What-in-the-Ear”
The tongue / a strap, the teeth / a buckle.
-Christina Stoddard, “How to Make Up for Unhealthy Habits”
Bright, beautiful, warm, and free, your body
as if from the bottom of a lake, rises and floats, a golden lure
glinting on the surface of my mind, among feathers.
-MRB Chelko, “The Bird Kingdom”
Filaments hang above a broke-open rodent / like a hammered pomegranate.
-Brian Tierney
Her eyes are crushed geraniums, her mouth // a study in sorrow.
-Sarah McKinstry-Brown
Her face is a guillotine. / How I love sharpness.
-Sean Shearer
Phone lines do nothing / but cut the sky into sheet music.
-Sam Sax
i count how to love myself, thoroughly, / an abacus, my love handles as armrests, / belly a scooped armchair, / a vulnerable asylum.
-Fariha Róisín
I was a dozen broken roses, bruised as velvet.
-Tiana Clark
The moon is a single stud / in a leather sky.
-James Allen Hall
If anyone else has a favorite metaphor—or one you’ve written, and are proud of—I’d love it if you shared it with me.