Arlene Bialaekphrastic poem based on Peter Foucault's "Embryo" here is the spark of an island among hundreds on a map. zoom in and admire the shape of things, the way her body sways and spatters whether or not you can see her doesn't matter. you will smell her sulfurous skin before anything. she's on the move. here is the contour of paradise you want to capture, but she is swift and leaves your graphite tips in the dust you may think she's a newcomer, but she has been here a long time. titanium, koa, abalone, salt water rising rinsing through her blood she runs the lava at midnight, her braided hair flowing for miles and unwinding only when she reaches the sea Yes, it has been years. and she wants to know why you never bother to say hello, or ask to come in, or take off your shoes before entering. why do you fix your gaze on her without offering her a song? or take selfies and then realize your boot souls are melting. she wants you to look beyond. will you? see the spattering on the golf courses, on the manmade beach. her veins are hard to see. do you know what "chicken skin" means? ask the locals. they will tell you. erase, erase the lines. embryo, she is. you have very little control. she will whisper in your ear that you both sadden and amuse her, and if you're lucky she will let you go. Originally published in More Good Talk: Poems from the Poets Laureate of Santa Clara County, July 2017. |
So we travel on earth seeking the terrain of Poetry, walking through wilderness and empty landscape or visiting those ancient sites like Dholavira in far-western Gujarat, or Mykenai in the Greek Peloponnese, or the Arawak campsite on eastern Carriacou in the Grenadine Windward Isles, pursuing that authenticity of experience in a form of antique material reality...
These are places, strange and vague situations where death is manifold and thoroughly extant to the careful eye. There are women’s bangles made of shell to be picked up from the saline dust or small copper beads and thin chert blades, or tiny obsidian arrow-heads that can be unhidden and disclosed beneath those bloody grey walls about the Lion Gate, or beautiful indented potsherds and ceramic fragments at the waterline where the Atlantic rolls out its long blue visceral waves...
Kevin McGrath 🐚Yoga of Poetry
“Dare to live the life you have dreamed."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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