{"id":1421,"date":"2025-09-29T16:20:33","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T20:20:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/?p=1421"},"modified":"2025-09-29T16:20:33","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T20:20:33","slug":"punching-a-hole-to-even-more-darkness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/2025\/09\/29\/punching-a-hole-to-even-more-darkness\/","title":{"rendered":"Punching a Hole to Even More Darkness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saeed Jones\u2019 Boy Found Inside A Wolf<\/em> has lived rent-free in my head since we first talked about it in class. This is partly because I was scared to share my reading of the poem, and I think it\u2019s important to notice that. Simply put, I interpret this poem as a record of, the insidious consequences of, and a reckoning with the memory of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of a father figure. It is only in certain lines – and callbacks from later poems such as the last poem in the collection – that I am able to see hope in this piece.<\/p>\n

So much of this poem comes alive to me through its use of enjambment. Every single line leads from the next, and specific words are carefully held separate for brief moments.<\/p>\n

\u201cRed is at the end of black. Pitch-black unthreads \/ and swings garnet\u201d – this line was the hardest for me to decipher. The repetition of black and pitch-black conjures up a nighttime scene, something bottomless and unknowable taking place at night. The threads may refer to clothing being undone, or certain concepts (familial) coming undone. The red will come up later, and the garnet is especially interesting. In The Blue Dress<\/em>, Saeed Jones mentions \u201ccrystal bowls and crystal cups\u201d in an antique room. I believe that this is a room of memory, or the past. Red is a color associated with danger and with blood.<\/p>\n

\u201cin what I thought was home. I\u2019m climbing \/ out of my father. His love a wet shine\u201d \u2013 here we see familial ideas being tainted, a home no longer being a safe place, and a character climbing \u2013 at night and up the stairs. This paints a very grim picture, however, the choice of \u201cclimbing\u201d and \u201cout\u201d alludes to this being over and done with, and that the character is ascending from their negative place. \u201cHis love a wet shine\u201d is our first use of both word choice and enjambment that heavily implies sexual themes. I\u2019d note, also, that it paints the picture of metamorphosis as well. Here, Saeed Jones holds sexually charged imagery with the act of transformation. A wet shine is what coats you when you are born, or when an insect is coming out of its cocoon. It also unfortunately alludes to his father\u2019s semen.<\/p>\n

\u201call over me. He knew I would come \/ to this: one small fist\u201d \u2013 I mean these are lines you just can\u2019t ignore. \u201ccome\u201d is emphasized through enjambment. The choice of \u201che knew\u201d and the fist being \u201csmall\u201d are twisted.<\/p>\n

\u201cpunching a hole \/ to daylight.\u201d \u2013 is this a positive ending about the main character\u2019s eventual rise from a traumatized past, transforming, and creating a new life for themselves? Yes! Is it also alluding to the sexual assault that continued until daylight when the main character was finally allowed to rise from their own, tainted bed, go downstairs, and continue on to school or wherever the day took them? I\u2019d argue that that isn\u2019t a reading we can ignore, despite how brutal it is.<\/p>\n

I have run out of space to connect this to other poems, but I really wanted to go line by line here. Briefly, the motif of wolves shows up again in Last Portrait as Boy<\/em>, stalking the character at the edge of the forest. I believe one of the things these wolves represent is dangerous, toxic, potentially codependent love between damaged individuals in the queer space. The first wolf is here, in Boy Found Inside a Wolf<\/em>, the wolf is the father, and the main character is the little boy, the hurt inner child who has struggled, as seen in Insomniac<\/em>, lines 8 and 9; and as corroborated by the unvoice \u201cno\u201d in Closet of Red<\/em>, to create boundaries and to experience truly positive and fulfilling love.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saeed Jones\u2019 Boy Found Inside A Wolf has lived rent-free in my head since we first talked about it in class. This is partly because I was scared to share my reading of the poem, and I think it\u2019s important to notice that. Simply put, I interpret this poem as a record of, the insidious … Continue reading Punching a Hole to Even More Darkness<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5660,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[344663],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2025"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5660"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1421"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1422,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1421\/revisions\/1422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}