Tag Archives: art

(Hotel Eden) In Full Light We Are Not Even a Shadow

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(Hotel Eden) In Full Light We Are Not Even a Shadow

Which is to say clarity persists in
increments, in the silent space between
color and lens, within parables seen
in the incomplete: straw, hand. Imagine

white valued more than manner as hidden
thought remains obscured. Lower your eyes, lean
forward. Perspectives tilt towards the mean,
suggesting purpose. When we examine

intent, do we find it? The irony
of bottled cork, of sullied paradise,
a coiled wire, the parrot whose voice,

unheard, implicates us. What felony
must we commit to admit the device
in play? Pull or release? The mimic’s choice.

 

* * *

Notes: “In full light we are not even a shadow” is a line from Antonio Porchia’s Voices.

Hotel Eden is the title of a piece of art by Joseph Cornell. An image may be found here:
http://www.wikiart.org/en/joseph-cornell/untitled-the-hotel-eden-1945

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This made its first appearance here in March 2015.

 

Self-Portrait as Window

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window

Self-Portrait as Window

When you look through me
which darkness illuminates
your vision, outlining the
ghosts of never was and not
yet? Or do your eyes glare
back in silent terror, knowing
the power of liquid made
solid, of light transformed to
electricity and by inference
these words or the shades
drawn by voice command?
Transparent, elusive, evident,
I stand alone, clear. Hidden.

“Self-Portrait as Window” first appeared in The Dew Drop in November 2020.

Laocoön

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GREEK COLUMN LINDOS

 

Laocoön

This figure of complexity
persuades a lingering

glance, the two-fold
inclination entwined,

horror expressed
in tandem, the sons’

limbs compressed
as the father struggles,

realizing true
sacrifice, the inward

grasp of storm and
wrath and serpent,

his face
echoing those yet

to come, breached
walls, a city in

flames, the cries
of warnings unheeded.

 

the_kelpies

Laocoön, through Virgil’s Aeneid, is the source of the phrase “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” The poem, which first appeared in The Blue Hour Magazine, was inspired by the sculpture “Laocoön and His Sons,” which resides at the Vatican. You might find Wikipedia’s entry of interest. Originally posted on the blog in February 2016.

Nocturne with a Line from Porchia

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bureau

 

Nocturne with a Line from Porchia

Everything is nothing, but afterwards.
I rise and the moon disturbs the darkness,
revealing symbols, a few stolen words
on the bureau. Tomorrow I’ll express
my gratitude by disappearing be-
fore I’m found, which is to say goodbye
before hello, a paradigm for the
prepossessed. Compton tells us to imply
what’s missing, like Van Gogh or Bill Monroe,
but why listen to the dead before they’ve
stopped speaking? Unfortunately we throw
out the bad with the good, only to save
the worst. I return to bed, and the floor
spins. Nothing is everything, but before.

 

* * *

This first appeared in The Blue Hour Magazine in December 2014, and is also included in my chapbook, If Your Matter Could Reform. The line “Everything is nothing, but afterwards” comes from Antonio Porchia’s Voices, translated by W.S. Merwin. Porchia wrote one book in his lifetime, but what a book it was! Often described as a collection of aphorisms, Voices is so much more – each time I open the book, I find new meaning in old lines.

Vincent

 

Morning Covers You

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eye camera

 

Morning Covers You

1

We extract
light, bleeding
it out one

diamond-shaped
hole after
another.

Finger the results.
Remediation
in form

or placement
to best
advantage?

At night
loneliness cradles
our bones.

2

You arrange our bodies to greater effect,
presuming lesser horrors
to be less.

A list emerges.
Refuting one,
accepting another.

Choices fixed.
Ecstasies of failure
purged.

Morning covers you
like a blue
shroud, so pale.

So cold
and bitter.

 

 

This originally appeared in Boston Poetry Magazine in April, 2014, and on this blog in October 2015.

diamond fence

 

Tuning the Beast

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Tuning the Beast

I prepare contingencies for all outcomes. No.
I’ve prepared for this: a body. A key. As if

that cloth draped a leg. Not a leg
but the representation of a limb.

Another fragment, brought forth and opened.
Not a limb, an arrow, perhaps, pointing to the sea.

An oar, brought inland and unrecognized
for its purpose, directed or aimless. No, not an oar.

A neck, polished, and a chamber, with strings.
Repetition, fixation. Position. Intent.

I pluck and strum, pick and stroke, maintaining
space, steel above wood, bending notes,

moving sound in time, purposefully, from
this place to that, the left hand, creating,

conversing. The right, reasoning, controlling,
burning its past to the present, allowing,

preventing, rendering beat, consistent
motion, shaping only this moment, this now.

 

 

“Tuning the Beast” was drafted during the August 2015 Tupelo Press 30-30 Challenge, thanks to Sunshine Jansen’s sponsorship. It subsequently appeared in The Blue Nib in September 2016.

 

 

A Fire to Light Our Tongues: Texas Writers on Spirituality

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A Fire to Light Our Tongues

Some publications are well worth the wait: I submitted poems to this project in 2017, and about seven months later was informed that two had been accepted. And then, silence for nearly two years. But the editors had diligently been working behind the scenes, and despite the pandemic and the tragic death of Donna Walker-Nixon, one of the lead editors, A Fire to Light Our Tongues: Texas Writers on Spirituality has recently been released by TCU Press. Featuring work by such luminaries as Naomi Shihab Nye (the title is taken from her introduction to Sailing the Ocean: 100 Poems by Young Poets), Christian Wiman, A.G. Mojtabai, Rick Bass, Nan Cuba, Mary Helen Specht, Kevin Prufer and other well known Texas writers, it is “an eclectic work exploring spirituality, faith, and disbelief…” As serendipity (and maybe karma) would have it, I was touched to discover that my poem “La Grange,” on page 176, faces “A Stockyard Liturgy,” on page 177, a poem by my late friend D.G. Geis. The last time I saw Greg, we met at a restaurant in Bandera, Texas for a “losers’ lunch,” celebrating the fact that neither of us had won a poetry competition in which we’d both been named finalists.

Since I have poems in this anthology, I’m not going to offer a detailed review. But in all honesty I must state that A Fire to Light Our Tongues: Texas Writers on Spirituality is an exquisitely curated collection of fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry. Order it through your local bookstore, or through Amazon.

Edited by Elizabeth Joan Dell and Donna Walker-Nixon.

 

 

 

Truchas (Elevation 8,000 Feet)

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trout

Truchas (Elevation 8,000 Feet)

Climbing
these stairs,

I resemble
a trout

flopping
in dry air,

another gasp
and a ratcheting

heart rate, up,
out, and through

that opening,
into the pale glow.

steep

Maybe we’ll get back there someday…

Some Answers You Never Considered

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Some Answers You Never Considered

At the cusp of night, before the sun steams out in the ocean,
and blues abandon the reds.

Nothing rests at the core of zero.

Cerulean blue was first marketed as coerulium.

What we consider sky includes only its lowest reaches.

Even considering a dense history with kites, I humbly concede,
and admit sacrifice as atonement, with grace.

No. I say it again. No.

Your visual system constructs the colors you see.

Only when the wind unbuttons its greatcoat, or at the tip
of an icicle, just before the drop catches itself.

Release the line and know the freedom of loss.

Transparent yet wide, unfolded like a fist freeing
a swarm of bees into honeyed air, it contains us.

Your inability to see it does not refute the horizon’s base.

If I knew I’d tell you.

 

* * *

“Some Answers You Never Considered” first appeared in Underfoot in October 2017.

 

Palinode (Hands, Hours, Light)

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xhand

P A L I N O D E ( H A N D S , H O U R S , L I G H T)

Consider the hand, its breadth, its history in mathematics and limitation. 27 bones, two strokes. Distal phalanges spanning gaps.  You turn and wave at the winnowed tunnel and the drops feathering the glass. The sinister endures tasks of life; right blesses power and assuages guilt. Presuming inflection, I use both hands to tally the absent. Later as we drive through the checkpoint, our way greased by fluency in the language of coin, heaven’s oblique arch recedes and I praise the passage of hours.

I praise the passage of hours measured in terms unknown to some: beyond two, many. Returning, we see streets guided by lampposts, bent trees and the uneven drizzle of sidewalk mendicants blurring through their days. A hanged man’s dessicated hand (pickled in salt and the urine of man, woman, dog and mare) forms the Hand of Glory, unlocking any portal the bearer desires opened: a direct tool of consciousness. Lacking the fat of a gibbeted felon, I cannot properly light the way.

I cannot properly light the way, but we  observe facets in differing terms: the hand, lips, and mouth claim more neural innervation than the rest of the body combined, perhaps a consequence of the primacy of making and sounding. Candles smolder and yield to shadow through dancing hand stories. The wave of acknowledgment, a finger across the lips, the open hand proclaiming innocence, expressing, grasping, creating, constraining, releasing. Extinguishing.

* * *

This first appeared in Hermeneutic Chaos, Issue 11.

 

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