[Alex Pepple]

Online Vigil


Pallbearers clomp along the rain-washed street,
their boots like drums on cobblestone.
We’d set our maiden date where dead ones meet.

“Let’s bid adieu to Uncle Pete,”
she’d texted, emojied with bone.
Pallbearers trudge along the rain-washed street.

Her airbrushed eyes imaged conceit.
Her cane swipes flies; she heaves a groan.
I've been lured to a date where dead ones meet.

Her hand strokes, flesh I can’t delete;
no cheat code left to mute her moan.
Pallbearers shuffle down the rain-washed street.

“Are we Facebook-official, Sweet?”
she woos, her gap-tooth grin homegrown,
is revealed in the date where dead ones meet.

The coffin sinks in flowered sleet.
Chilled in the rain, I close my phone
where pallbearers paced down the rain-dark street,
in that encounter where the dead ones meet.

------------------------------------------------------


~~~Original version ~~~

Online


Pallbearers clomped on down the rainy street.
Our date had happened at the funeral home.
She’d typed in chain emails, “I’d love to meet

you there,” as my log-ins spiked when Uncle Pete,
loft-climbing, missed forever grabbing a tome.
Pallbearers bore on down the rainy street.

Her eyes betrayed airbrushing skill. She beat
flies with her church cane, wheezing, “Mud and loam
everywhere!” through the funeral home. Crow’s feet

traced her face when she moaned, “I’d love a treat.”
The chat fizzled; I meant to say a gnome
but thought, “Online, here’s where I’d hit Delete.”

Forecasters missed this storm that sapped blood heat,
bedraggled boots—heavens a waterbomb.
Pallbearers clomped on down the rainy street.

Offline it was, yet still, I prayed for cheat
codes per her online games. Then the mouth of a tomb.
Pallbearers eased their load on flowered sleet.
She rasped, “Make this Facebook-official—tweet!”

[Julie Steiner]

Hi, Alex!

This villanelle with only one repetend feels like an exercise to me. And this poem is also more narrative than lyric. Both of which would probably have been okay with me, if either the variant form or the story had been more engaging.

But I struggled to see any advantage to writing a villanelle this way—frankly, it looks like the rule-bending is happening for no other reason than that writing villanelles the usual way is hard—and I didn't really care what happened to characters who rang so false.

Several things stood out to me as strange:

First, the pallbearers. Are they really clomping down the street from the funeral home to the cemetery? Is Uncle Pete enough of a celebrity to justify a public parade? Why isn't there just a hearse for that part of the journey? And if there's a horse-drawn hearse (as "clomping" suggests), then why are there pallbearers? Aren't pallbearers' duties pretty much limited to getting the coffin in and out of the hearse?

To me, "chain emails" suggests "chain letters" before it suggests "chain smoking," but since the former doesn't make sense in this context, the latter seems to be how the poem is using this term.

Surely the narrator would have said "book" instead of "tome," if not for the rhyme requirement. (But even if he had said "book," does one typically "loft-climb" to get those? "Shelf-climbing," maybe.)

I'm not sure what a "church cane" is. I've heard of "church fans," which are cheap paper fans sometimes made available in churches without air conditioning, but a cane seems far too expensive to give away like that.

"I meant to say a gnome" baffles me. "I meant to say something gnomic," perhaps? A gnome is something else.

In the last line, I don't understand what Facebook has to do with tweeting. Is that the point? That this obnoxious woman is too stupid to know the difference? If so, I don't think it makes a funny enough punchline to justify a villanelle-length poem.

Sorry I can't be more enthusiastic about this one. For me, the best part of the poem was “Online, here’s where I’d hit Delete.”

[Alex Pepple]

Hello, Julie!

Thanks for looking in and for the thoughtful, in-depth comments! I completely understand how the poem’s mix of unconventional narrative and deviation from the traditional villanelle form might not land well, especially if one comes in expecting a formal deployment of the classic structure.

That said, the poem was deliberately conceived as an adulterated villanelle—call it a kind of nonce form—as a formal echo of the surreal or absurdist oddity within the story itself. So yes, I bent the rules quite consciously, aiming for that echo of distortion. (And just to reassure: I’ve got a few very strict villanelles under my belt when that was the goal!)

You've raised several specific points about narrative clarity and logic—particularly the role of the pallbearers, the phrase “chain emails,” and the “gnome” line—and those are very helpful. I’ll definitely be revisiting those areas with your comments in mind to see what revisions might strengthen the poem overall.

Thanks again for engaging with it so thoughtfully, even if it didn’t click for you this time!

Cheers,
…Alex

P.S. - And forgot to respond that 'gnome' in the context means 'maxim/aphorism'...

[Julie Steiner]

Yes, I know that you've written more standard villanelles before. I'm just not convinced that this one's variants feel justified. (Other readers may disagree, of course.)

I stand corrected on gnome's being able to mean "a gnomic statement"! I'd never encountered that definition before double-checking just now, so that I could argue with you. I wonder how many other readers will also be tripped up by that less common definition.

[Susan McLean]

Hi, Alex,
I agree with most of what Julie said, especially about "gnome" and "tome." In a tightly rhymed form like the villanelle, exact rhymes that seem a bad fit for the context are likely to seem chosen for the rhyme. I think you do better with slant rhymes like "bomb" and "tomb." The problem with absurdist content in a tight form is that it feels more like an exercise than an attempt at communicating anything. I was interested in the premise of a date at a funeral home, which seemed to have opportunities for humor or awkwardness, but I don't think the poem delivered on what I was hoping for. Maybe you intended something else.

Susan

[Hilary Biehl]

Hi Alex, I'm trying to work out what's going on here. Is it an elderly couple that is dating online with the specter of death and decrepitude hanging over them? And they are finally meeting in person at a funeral because his uncle took a fall while trying to grab a book? Is N praying for a tomb because the date is going so badly? That's the best I could make out the scenario.

If I'm anywhere in the ballpark - I think the idea has potential for black humor and surrealism, but I also think that the villanelle is maybe not the right form for this idea (though that could just be my own prejudice against villanelles; I like them sometimes, but not often). As the poem progresses, the language sounds increasingly strained. I don't mind the variations or the off-rhymes, but constructions such as "Forecasters missed this storm that sapped blood heat" don't sound natural to me, for instance.

If you decide to try rewriting it in a different (more forgiving?) form, I'll be interested to see where that goes.

[Alex Pepple]

Thank you all for the comments and thoughtful engagements! Overall, they confirm that the poem wasn’t quite achieving what it set out to do—so I’ve now revised it extensively. Hopefully, this new version lands much closer to the mark.

Julie, you were right about “gnome”—turns out not many readers are making the intended association, and most seem to default to the ghoulish!

Susan, your points about the gnome/tome rhyme and other diction choices were well taken—hopefully the changes sit better with you now.

Hilary, yes, the original likely leaned too far into the cryptic. At one stage, the poem was titled “Catfish. Online Meet.”—which laid the cards on the table from the start. But I’d worried that gave away too much too soon. Still, the revision now aims for more clarity about what’s going on while preserving the poem’s oddball mood. And no—I haven’t given up on the villanelle! I’m still bending the form a bit, but with less distortion than in the original.

Thanks again to all of you—I really appreciate the push to refine this, and I’d love to hear your impressions on the new version. Since it’s a significant rewrite, I haven’t listed the changes individually.

Cheers,
…Alex