Let’s read the poem first before any analyses:


Sausage



Her hands that were in the photograph I held with both hands

When she got up she didn’t say thank you

May I walk with you?


Didn’t say no

I hold her hands
we walk a picture


The one they hid in your eyes
the more I look the less I find
by the way aren’t you wed?

didn’t say

won’t you?

Didn’t say no!

We wed!

Days were passing as the wind
and nights were no longer than seconds
we were two lonely photos
that the world wanted to expel from the album
Expelled! Don’t believe it?!
Tonight when we’re sleeping obverse in another photo
pay that album a visit
open the frig door in that shot and help yourself
to whatever

sorry! we only have sausage!
 

 

Poem by Ali Abdolrezaei

 

 

 

As we read the poem, we can imagine the plot unfolding before our very eyes. The reader can easily create the scenes in their mind. If you read with performance in mind, you are more likely to appreciate the poet’s intentions and skills.
Throughout the poem, the main character speaks his thoughts to the reader in a soliloquy and that in turn colours our perception of the narrative. The information disseminated, while intriguing sympathy, enables us to create a unified perception of the case. Towards the end, we are left to think about the social context of the poem and about how it fits into the literary tradition.

 

The narrative is in verse with strong sound-pattern rhythms of the words. The first two syllables “Her hands” is stressed and gives a heavy significance to the opening. The syntax of the first line, ambiguously, connotates love at first sight with whom the protagonist had once encountered in a picture. The assertion “both hands” at the end of the first line focuses our imagination on the support provided by the protagonist to the beloved at a time of difficulty:
“When she got up she didn’t say thank you”

 

The numerous uses of the singular syllable “hands” create a unified impression of intimacy between the two characters. At the peak of such implication, all of a sudden we realise that the story is occurring in the virtual space of an album:
“We were two lonely photos”

 

With such a shift in realisation, comes the idea about the nature of mediation and the subjectivity of the human agency as the source upon which relationships in modern societies arise. The poem challenges the rational subject of its privileged access to truth.
The poem implicitly questions the validity of objectivity as to whether any reality there exists outside of our own minds. The protagonist’s perceptions of events and relations are figments of his imagination in that he is the originator of his own perceived reality:
“Don’t believe it?!”

 

The events throughout the poem are presented in a chronological order and propagate a notion that the two characters were actually living together up to the flashpoint of the death:
“We wed…Tonight...we’re sleeping obverse in another photo”
But such account may not be the case: the physical relationship did not occur. Reality or delusion, this is the question the poem is concerned with.

 

In the final episode, the protagonist shows off his contentment by saying that he and his beloved partner as two lonely pictures ran their scheduled showdown. We learn from the last snapshot that the deceased protagonist was lying this time round obverse in a photo. To the confused reader, the sausage appearing in one of the pictures of the album is offered as a means for celebration of life of the passed away regardless of actual or virtual death:
“Open the frig door in that shot and help yourself”

 

The sausage as the only edible item in the fridge may idiosyncratically be assumed in existence:
“Sorry we only got sausage!”

 

The protagonist creates an imagined reality within which a relationship with his invented persona, originating from a photograph, takes effect.

However, his life in virtual reality might be considered by materialists and objectivists alike as delusional. But as a matter of fact, we each create our own personal reality. This paradigm may be related to the Buddhist concept of emptiness or Shunyata.

 

The poem raises a profound philosophical question “What is real?”. It contemplates on the idea of there being different realities for different people. The poem gives a practical answer: when people think something is true, it takes on a life of its own.

 

As for the present age, the simulated copy has superseded the original. That is to say, the real object has been effaced by the signs of its existence. The notion of reality has been complicated by the profusion of its images. So, one may conclude that the reality no longer exists. In the case portrayed in the poem, one may opt for a denial of the physical occurrence of any event.

 

The meaning and the cadence of the text offers a challenging perspective on the human condition. Baudrillard called this phenomenon as one of “hyper reality”. Hyper reality is significant as a paradigm to explain the inability of consciousness to distinguish between reality and fantasy, especially in high technological societies.

 

Here the reader is made aware of the nature of human life rather than just pure concern with the aesthetic in a poem. Although the aesthetic reaches readers on the surface level, but its intellectuality goes further onto a revelation level. That’s where its substance lies.