Analysis of All the Stones That Built Me



In this house are things:
a boy, a lantern,
dead mice, silverware,
running water, screams.

There is filth in this house,
and there is a mop,
and the filth is mop,
and the mop is filth.
And there is me: mop and filth.

This house is a broken Louvre.
In it, I do not have a face,
only a coin ... on the floor ... 
In its shimmer—ghosts pushing me off the roof,
daring me to fly.

And the bedroom?
We sleep when we are dead.
The kitchen?
In this house, we break not bread but stones and promises.
How long have you died here?

My mother lived in this house when I lived in her.
She was many a thing:
a girl, a dark room, scurrying mice,
rust, dripping water, silence,
and at the end, the last spoonful of canned beans.
They collect, dancing on the ceiling, the memories.
They cry, they howl,
they put a bounty out on me.

How do I quell the place that built me?
Set fire to all your bones.

There is no dreaming in this house.
I want to dream that I was old.


Scheme XXXX ABBCC XXXXX XXXXX XXXXXXXD DX AX
Poetic Form
Metre 01111 01010 1110 10101 111011 01101 00111 00111 0111101 11101010 01111101 1001101 01101101101 10111 001 111111 010 0111111110100 111111 110101111100 111001 010111001 1101010 0101011111 1011010100100 1111 11010111 111101111 1101111 11110011 11111111
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 966
Words 225
Sentences 20
Stanzas 7
Stanza Lengths 4, 5, 5, 5, 8, 2, 2
Lines Amount 31
Letters per line (avg) 23
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 101
Words per stanza (avg) 27

About this poem

Source: Poetry (April 2022)

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Written on 2022

Submitted by Drone232 on May 31, 2022

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:07 min read
17

SOMTO IHEZUE

Somto Ihezue is an Igbo writer. He loves white-soled shoes and the smell of rain. more…

All SOMTO IHEZUE poems | SOMTO IHEZUE Books

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