Turner,, Douglas in “War of the Roses”
Sports Saturday
Yesterday I was thumbing through This Sporting Life: Poems about Sports and Games and came across this very clever poem that frames rock-paper-scissors as a game about dysfunctional relationships.
The analogy works because the game involves extending one’s hand to another person. As in those relationships where to show vulnerability is to be shredded, the partners take turns violating each other. In such relationships as in the game, it’s always win-lose.
The final creepy image—stone surrendering to paper’s suffocating embrace—reminds me of the codependent clod of clay in Blake’s “The Clod and the Pebble.” In this case, however, it’s the pebble that surrenders.
Or maybe the two are engaged in make-up sex. But it’s not a healthy resolution, what with all the sharp edges, the cold hardness, and the paper-thin sensitivity that can be turned into a weapon. It’s a game that healthy couples refuse to play.
Playing the Game
By Barbara Goldowsky
You stick out your fist: stone
Breaks my two fingers playing scissors.
You offer your hand, open.
I shred the palm: it’s paper.
I am still scissors.
Have you no heart? you ask.
But I am stone.
Your hand is still paper,
you wrap me up:
closer than blades,
harder than hearts.