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Mudlark No. 16 (2000)
from Body Tapestries
by Stuart Lishan
Visionary statement: In general I suppose I am a romantic with regards to how I feel about and approach language, both in what I hope to achieve in my own poetic efforts and in what often moves me most in the poetry of others; that is to say, I believe that there is a mystery in our experience with language. And if language is a vehicle through which we can come to know experience, our world[s] and universe[s], and our place[s] and sense[s] of it[them], then poets — to the extent that they extend, push, create, recreate, interrogate, give-birth-to-and-nurture language — expand what we know, and our notions of how we come to know.
Pushy, self-serving statement: Stuart Lishan has published work in a number of literary journals and e-zines, including, most recently and upcoming, XCONNECT, BARROW STREEET, ARTS & LETTERS, KENYON REVIEW, LA PETITE ZINE, IN POSSE REVIEW, FOR POETRY.COM, THE JOURNAL, POET LORE, AMERICAN LITERARY REVIEW, and SMARTISH PACE. The poems in this issue are from a full-length manuscript entitled, surprise, BODY TAPESTRIES, which was a finalist in last year's (2000) Walt Whitman award competition. Among Stuart Lishan's many dreams and wishes is the hope that he will one day write a mini-bio at least as good as Molly Fisk's for her poster in MUDLARK, No. 4, or as catchy as the first sentence of Jeffrey Little's bio in his issue of MUDLARK, No. 15.
A Note on BODY TAPESTRIES
Learning a Landscape of Interior Spaces
In 1986 the 1st voice arrived.
"Like I'm a fiend in high school, like dead sky, Man."
The voice of Monkey Boy. Lonely high school kid. He who has a deep crush on a girl named Felicia, who has an affair with a greaser named Angel, who commits suicide when he sees Felicia being "intimate" with other boys after a football game, and, once dead, who learns to be an angel, the kind who ministers to other troubled folk, who kisses "the cut wrists and the burns on the suicides' arms," who touches their flesh, who feels their lips upon his own.
But I didn't know any of that then. I just followed the voice.
Or, rather, the voices.
The Duchess of Moisture. Her anger blooms, erupts into a flower of violence upon the world she inhabits. Her anger is a motive force that propels many of the narrative threads in the sequence, twists them about, frays them, rearranges them.
Which is to say,
and so on,
which is to say,
and sew on.
The Duchess dotes on a character named Moonlight, and he for her, seemingly. But he is a coward, a cad. He professes love for the Duchess, then leaves her for another, The Princess Waterfall, and then, when the Duchess' troops pursue him, he in turn leaves her, to be guarded by the woodcutter turned into a tree, until his return. But, as might be expected from a coward, a cad, he never returns, ending up instead at the end of the universe, writing postcards home, living on a cusp of solitude and loneliness.
Which is to say...
Meanwhile, Princess Waterfall has a child by him, a daughter, Moonlit Lake, who is raped and then murdered by the Duchess' troops. Because longing and grief can be read in many ways, and flows down many different paths, the poems in her voice can be read both across and down in a sort of columnar way.
And sew on.
These narratives have been woven into silken tapestries by Caterpillar, a faithful recorder (she who even records the moment of her death, "Thus I was.").
And so in the weave of we've, the characters came.
The Leech Oracle, who predicts what will happen to these tapestries. The elves enchained in the darkness by the Duchess, who escort caterpillar to visit the bones of her dead father.
Turtle, who, when the Duchess of Moisture's anger erupts, escorts Caterpillar on her shell through the sea to seek help from the Dolphin Queen. They arrive at her citadel too late.
Greybeard worm who escapes from being shoveled down into the maws of the "scabied brood" of the Duchess' ally, the Empress Waterfowl, she who has presence but no voice in these proceedings. But old Greybeard, crafty old thing, escapes to tell his tale, which is then repeated by a younger worm, but, though the sounds are the same, as in a game of telephone, the words come out differently.
And others. Which is to say the world presented itself slowly.
In pieces.
But how should/does one take these funny named fairytale-like characters? Ironically? Archetypically? As the Woodcutter who has been turned into a tree says, upon being asked if he's "a shire/ For the wasp? A limbate to the ivy's art?",
"To everything, yes."
Throughout, the narratives start, the narratives stop, The narratives pick up again, are embellished, are responded to by different characters, are transformed, transmuted, translated, even as they are transmitted.
When these poems were first presented to our erstwhile editor, our good William Slaughter (a sort of weaver himself, compiler of the voices that linger in MUDLARK, so that as we shuttle from issue to issue, poster to poster, year to year, a sort of tapestry is born, is spun ever wider and ever more widely fine), I explained to him that "the work I'm submitting is from a book-length series of what I call 'scarred' or 'splintered' sonnets, that the poems in the series are poly vocal and consist of a number of coinciding/colliding/interwoven narratives."
And sew on. Multi-narratived, the sequence attempts to thrive off the scintillates, the energy produced when a poem approaches a recognizable form and then veers away from it. Likewise, within a larger frame of narrative, there are "sub-narratives" that trail off, only to be picked up again later in the sequence; various voicings, often within the same poem; and differing layers of intertextualities. The Duchess of Moisture, for example, has written an autobiography that co-exists within the sequence as a sort of shadow text. A reader/listener will construct these voices in different ways, is invited to construct these voices in different ways.
The fact that the sequence is entitled Body Tapestries is meant to suggest that the tapestries are within us, a mapping of sorts, of interior spaces, of voicings from some of the [un?]common areas we share.
For if poetry is a record, can it be with the emphasis on cord, that which attempts to tie together, to bind, and on re, to bind together again? And again?
"The Final Tapestry: To Be Read After My Death" was originally published in CAFE SOLO.
Contents
The Breeze Fluttered Tapestry: April
Where I Introduce The Antagonists: The Duchess of Moisture,
The Empress of Waterfowl
When the Grape Became Purple: The Aged Genii
Recalls the War of His Kind Against The Moisture Duchess
Why We Sometimes Don't Say Anything in Dreams: Monkey Boy
The Duchess of Moisture Writes With the Femur of a Heron's Leg:
Her Autobiography, the Early Years
Monkey Boy's In-Class English Theme: Greaser Angel
and a Desperado Heart; Monkey Boy Tries to Forget Felicia
Angel's Passion: Greaser Angel and Monkey Boy
Park Off the Deep Woods Road
Where I Comment Upon the Main Action in These Tapestries So Far
The Starfish Song: The Biologist Doctor Gwilliam,
After Years in His Laboratory
What the Leech Oracle Prophesies: The Fate of These Tapestries
A Reminiscence of Early Loves: Why Moonlight Moves Across the Sky
More From Her Autobiography: The Duchess of Moisture
Tells Me How She Fell in Love With and Grew to Hate Moonlight
Why We Get What We Can Get: Monkey Boy
Hangs Out With The Squirrels
The Tapestry of Wishing: Where I Tell How The Duchess of Moisture's
Revenge Against Moonlight and Those Closest to Him Began
Turtle Story: Turtle Tells How He Ferried Me to The Dolphin Queen
When She Summoned Me at My Wishes' Behests
The Dolphin Queen: Turtle and Caterpillar Enter The Citadel
of Pearl, Only to Find The Duchess Has Been There First
The Duchess' Destruction of Earth's 999 Moons:
Her Account of Recent Events, Both On and Off the Record
Graduation Ceremony: Monkey Boy,
in Heaven now, Learns to be an Angel
Why Memory Grows Fonder the Farther You Go: Where I Find Postcard
Scraps From When Moonlight Escaped to the Universe's Edge
The Tapestry of Leaves: What I Read When I Chance to Find
Three Unfinished Journal Entries, Early Drafts
From The Duchess of Moisture's Autobiography
The Tapestry of Images: Where I Find The Duchess of Moisture
Sighing/Singing to Herself as She Looks at Her Reflection in the Pond
Monkey Boy, Returning to Earth as a Single Red Rose, Helps Out
a Friend, With Lascivious Thoughts, Running on a Country Road
My Final Words: Where I Take Notes On My Execution
The Final Tapestry: (To Be Read After My Death)
The Breeze Fluttered Tapestry: April
"Inward"; "Cold!"; such is the pared speech of blossoms,
Which is their bent attitude of blame
As April rain congeals to snow; like lost suns
The daffodils curl on themselves, and I, in the same
Bowed speech, remember that far off summer
When you were gone, that night at Sweet Springs,
When you were gone, by the tide-swelled marshes, where star-
Light cantilevered through the water rings
Past the frog songs, past the caterpillar
Spinning her silks into the fog filtered moonlight —
These breeze fluttered tapestries of my years —
So they seemed that eucalyptus scented night
As the dew fell, and the caterpillar's silks glistened;
"Come," they shone, "Begin here; closer; listen..."
Where I Introduce The Antagonists:
The Duchess of Moisture, The Empress of Waterfowl
The Duchess of Moisture streamed from her castle;
Deep in her mitered soul she was enraged;
She arranged her forces for the battle;
It was a drear morning; in the village,
By the tall volcano, near the rivers,
And in our houses, her anger began;
Her sea witches were sent to claim us; the oars
They rowed with were golden; far inland
My muscles were tired; buoyed by the dead horses,
The Empress of Waterfowl, her purple
Pennant raised, cried out to the marshes,
To the curlews and sheldrakes, the supple
Formations of swans; the moon showed what was left;
No quality of language would spell our grief...
When the Grape Became Purple: The Aged Genii Recalls
the War of His Kind Against The Moisture Duchess
"... Then the mother genii's belly opened;
Then, disgorging their arrows and their armor,
Her babies, slithering like cobras, were siphoned
Into the light; the Duchess began her war;
Her clouds arced over us, like dinner plates,
Exploded, and the shards massed into black skeletons;
They climbed towards us over the walls of burial plots;
Then her hot rain burst into our scalded bones,
And we climbed onto wolves and rode away, cowards;
It was autumn when finally we felt safe;
The grapes were shiny and ripe, unbled, uncolored
Still by their shame of us; we slid their soft
Skins back, like the shut eyelids of dreamers, and in
We curled, stunned, waiting... for the world to be naive again..."
Why We Sometimes Don't Say Anything
in Dreams: Monkey Boy
"I'm a fiend in high school, like dead-sky, man;
Like in the shake line my hair gathers like fur;
Like when I climb the bleachers during gym
And hooch for hours, Coach says, 'Save it for
Friday';
like things swim in front of me
(Like when a Harley starts I think 'lion'),
Like that ROTC kid kicks me, says, 'Say yes
Sir, YES SIR!'
Like eat my heart for dinner, man;
Like I give Felisha grubs in study hall;
Like my dick is crawling with larval flies;
Like trees trees trees they're fucking beautiful;
Like there's this thing in my head and there's wires;
Like Doctor Kramer says, 'Sit back, try not
To breathe,' so I don't, and it's like..., so I don't..."
The Duchess of Moisture Writes With the Femur
of a Heron's Leg: Her Autobiography, the Early Years
"Insect who damns me with woman's weaving, you,
Why should I not be defined by my memories; listen:
I was suckled where no sea bloomed, my only view
A prairie bleached, monotonous as moonlight; but when
The mercuries in my begatters' blood burned
And drove them to move, we moved; I remember
The distant salt scent; then, closer, as we turned
The curve of the hills, the sea unfolded; November
Squalls curtained the horizon; the cold
Drizzle and tingle of the salt sea loathed
What I was, what I would jettison behind; that I could
Give praise to cunning and flaming hate that seals the oath
To my besieged sea love; when I acquired power,
I vowed to bring the leveling sea there, then there..., then here..."
Monkey Boy's In-Class English Theme:
Greaser Angel and a Desperado Heart;
Monkey Boy Tries to Forget Felicia
"It's like, my brain explodes in this page whiteness,
So like I turn in: '... Hunters in bungalow walls, in vice
Principal's hassle down passless hallways; "Worthless,"
He points at me, this power man in lullaby voice...
And then there's Coach; Coach! Aargh! Hate him!...
Lunch time — wolf bark-lockers slam;... "He gets crazier";
Felicia points from her slum of friends — now home
Is Angel sucking me in his Olds cruiser,
Like disappear, like in, in a forest:
Moonlit sounds — hoot owl, wind, mole,
Touch of waterfall mist; finally, rest...
Now coach and Narcs — "Bang!" — banging on the window;
Wolves bark from the halls of trees; I think, "Hide!";
Fences everywhere, bells, bloody clangs; in my head...'"
Angel's Passion: Greaser Angel and Monkey Boy
Park Off the Deep Woods Road
"How does that feel? And that? And this? Look, gusts
Of leaves swirling in a trance, man — heart flutters;
Hey, Pretty Boy, loll on me; like it's midnight, ghosts
Rise off the hot car hood; these are the queer words
I whisper, man — 'Pretty, Pretty Boy'; you see,
With my tongue and my hands, I can be a king
For you, like heart's mirror, like truth — look at me;
Don't be like the rest — look at me! That stinking
Girl's in your thoughts; I can see her fantasy moves,
But you'd be wingtip borne, an impresario queen
With me, you, who has forgotten the scents of my love;
These Felicia thoughts — why can't you let me wean
Them from you? In my heart you're the moon that pulls;
I'm the tide and you draw me to you, suckled, full..."
Where I Comment Upon the Main Action
in These Tapestries So Far
The Duchess of Moisture's fortunes grew rosier,
After the squadrons of shadows were gassed,
When the commands came to wear her cough forever,
When her spacecraft landed, when its blackness
Leeched out light, when the Duchess of our disease
Waved her flag and her black eyes glittered through portholes;
When the captains of barracudas, our countries
Secured now, came in from their patrols;
When, "Fraulein Moisture," they said, "we have taken care
Of Moonlight, the enemy of your people";
When we fought back with rocks and received these scars;
Yes, back then we had a song, its words were simple;
They made us believe that one forgets pain,
That the gift in afterwords is that sweetness remains...
The Starfish Song: The Biologist
Doctor Gwilliam, After Years in His Laboratory,
He walks into the night stillness; his students
Are gone; in the west are constellations
He hasn't seen before, a dampness
He has never felt, the scent of a different ocean;
All the next day he looks at his planet;
'My love for you is still like water, total,
Submerging,' he whispers, 'like an alphabet
I've only now learned to read'; in a tide pool
A hermit crab purrs; a sea anemone
Flowers; in the second millennium
Of the Moisture reign, a starfish, like memory,
Sings to the peaceful, the sleeping Doctor Gwilliam;
Sea horses play on their sea weed guitars,
The music of water, glorious moisture...
What the Leech Oracle Prophesies:
The Fate of These Tapestries
Against my will she electrifies — through the socket
She sucks my blood with — this sense of my work's fate;
Now it flows, commingles, my blunt sapped heart
Heavy with it; to find the fall or flight
Of the silks my skill weaves, the leech enters
My ivory gates to read, to rend my heart's blood:
"What will be found," she says, "is a fragment you've never
Witnessed or imagined; and only the pieces will stand —
See, I hold them toward you:'... the wave crests illumine
Galileo Dolphin, a leaping star...; then, turning
His dream antenna towards her... Doctor Gwilliam. . . ;
His love for her...; arrival of burning...,
The Duchess...; their moonlight sin, the slain...
Troops... she...; then the rolling clouds flame...' "
A Reminiscence of Early Loves:
Why Moonlight Moves Across the Sky
Duchess: That long, still-sweetening memory: As my army defined
Itself and gathered round me mottled and sieve-
Like as a mackerel sky, I took you to my castle, mine;
I led you...; my archers womanned the walls, my slaves
The elves sang, as you touched the folds of my skin; oh,
All this I remember now like yesterday...
Moonlight: I loved you, when I first saw you through the bowed
Branches as you slept and I thought, "just to lay
Alongside you!" I loved the way your skin scent,
Like ferns in the summer forest, soothed my shrill
Voices, urging, uncommitted; so I went,
I go, among night skies looking for the will
To stop, rest; I felt that in your arms.
Duchess: So come, love, come, and let me kiss away your storms...
More From Her Autobiography: The Duchess
of Moisture Tells Me How She Fell in Love With
and Grew to Hate Moonlight
"I couldn't stand my love loving someone
Other than me; I can't unfasten the stays
Of my love, my burning for this anti-sun;
I can't for all my tide's longing...; O, the ways
Of Moonlight — I remember when I let
The lambent seashore sigh of us rise — sing
Your dirge of desire, Weaver; my wet
Body stroked by him, I loved, in the swaying
Concupiscence of rain, as my return; how
Could you know such sweetness? He lay me down and kissed
The slit that rings my thighs — how could you know,
Weaver, hidden by morning, my summoned mist,
His entering — how could you know the first time?...
Well, I'm not some schoolyard whore... he is mine..."
Why We Get What We Can Get:
Monkey Boy Hangs Out With The Squirrels
"Like Mr. Buck says I'm suspended; Right;
Like Felisha, I saw you peel down, Friday,
Near the woodshop, after the game that night;
You didn't know me; I thought, 'Infidelity,
Man, she's done it to me'; I wanted it
Good just once, Felisha; like in the trees, squirrel
Junkies on needle-thin branches shoot
Up and up, and they leap, their tails in a whirl;
Like, it was like a beast was climbing my baby;
Like, a hand like an otter slid down your hair;
A puma pawed what should have been saved for me.
You lifted, skirt like a skunk's tail; you didn't scare;
But I did; when you squealed, as you came, I let go,
Jumped, pretending, that to meet me, your hips rose..."
The Tapestry of Wishing: Where I Tell How
The Duchess of Moisture's Revenge Against
Moonlight and Those Closest to Him Began
First, a frost on the spirit — rage stirring, flower
Felt; then coyly, like placid volcanic ash,
Snow fell; then the wind's sea salt fervor
Began; ice swathed bit by bit like a lash
Unleashed upon us; pulled from me my wishes'
Savaged forms scattered; Duchess revenge
Sent them scouring through the night like witches
Before they fell like a meteor's red edged
Embers into the sea; now wending their way,
Caravanned by — whom? currents? scaled or scalloped
Harbingers? — I don't know, but far away,
To the Dolphins' Pearl Citadel, they escaped,
And so moved was the queen there that her strong
Magic was stirred; she felt our hurt, you see, our wrong...
Turtle Story: Turtle Tells How He Ferried Me
to The Dolphin Queen When She Summoned Me
at My Wishes' Behests
"Yes, I am the crinkly faced, or worse; dumb-
Ness seems to steal upon me, true, but content?
I am...; many legged weaver full of wisdom,
Don't fear; think of me a kindly continent —
Come on, climb that reed until your weight
Bends it like a bow and, like forgiveness,
Touches me; I love the reeds that sway like wheat. . .
That's it; hug my shell now; the fog rises —
We should go, it's best you don't be seen
You know... fog like shells all made of quiet;
No one laughs at me here, and my Queen... my Queen
Must always remain Duchess concealed; see that quaint
Crab who scuttles about like a traipsing skull?
A spy, sifting for her through the seas ancient, tropical..."
The Dolphin Queen: Turtle and Caterpillar
Enter The Citadel of Pearl, Only to Find The Duchess
Has Been There First
Turtle: These red tides I labor through —
Caterpillar: Thick as blood
Turtle: Colored like welts
Caterpillar: Something makes the salt air ill
Turtle: This brined sea wind tastes bitter to me
Caterpillar: biled
Turtle: My breath comes hard
Caterpillar: So close to the citadel
Turtle: This all seems wrong
Caterpillar: Is there no welcoming
Turtle: No whale song
Caterpillar: No starred parapets of mountains
Turtle: No Queen's Guards
Caterpillar: Where crowds wave flags winnowing
Turtle: Here are no subjects
Caterpillar: Only verbed motions
Turtle: The wind-shalloped waves
Caterpillar Tug me to this bay
Turtle: In which nothing lives
Caterpillar: In the dead-jammed canal
Turtle: By the Pearl Castle
Caterpillar: The dead float like buoys
Turtle: Beside their Queen
Caterpillar: Slain in the gutted coral
Turtle: The Moisture Duchess
Caterpillar: Who thinks through violence
Turtle: Rules Only these spelless nights now
Caterpillar: Ruined voiceless...
The Duchess' Destruction of Earth's 999 Moons:
Her Account of Recent Events, Both On and Off the Record
"You'll know my pain by how much pain I cause,
And still my heart forever will hurt more."
— from The Duchess of Moisture's Autobiography
"'I have loved, Weaver, as much as anyone could;
And I long, I have longed, the length of milky time,
But my breasts, my heart invaded, were then made cold;
Tell them, too, that in youth my heart would teem
With the blown breath of Moonlight's April rain —
I was a young girl then; I was....' My words
Metamorphose to mist reminiscing pain...;
When Moonlight rose from me into the woods
I culled among my troops my curdling hate
For her, young girl whom Moonlight prizes most;
I made for him and his newest love a broken heart —
Let them pine forever; those nights, my flood hosts
Of eroding tears cankered the moons — my plaint —
Until all but the strongest like me split apart..."
Graduation Ceremony: Monkey Boy,
in Heaven now, Learns to be an Angel
"...Like they give me wings as red as my cuts,
And icy, like they give to penitents; like on the dusty field
Near those hills, where I trained in their Quonset huts,
I'm flying; when the windsock is unfurled,
Stiffened by winds of the weeping, I'm gone; like I sweep
Down spiraling to the suicides' salt anger;
Like in their sobbing wards I'm diving like a shrike
Into their wounds; outside, the Duchess of Moisture, after
More, with her dizzying, freezing rains
And her worms and toads, attacks through the mist —
Fuck it; like I'm kissing the cut wrists and the burns
On the suicides' arms; like I'm giving them blood as kissed
As Christ's; like I'm bending over their shut eyes,
And I'm whispering, like in dreams; like they hear me..."
Why Memory Grows Fonder the Farther You Go:
Where I Find Postcard Scraps From When Moonlight
Escaped to the Universe's Edge
"Ground fog curling through the violets...; moles,
Or somethings, live under the barn...; in the flower
Bed, beaver trails? Teach me my way, bird calls...;
Ringing from down in the village...; is the water
Leaving secrets? On the porch it taps messages...;
In the dialogue my eyes have with the fragrant
Clouds, I hear the fields stretch towards their edges...;
Did hornets live in the eaves? I forget,
But I'm sure of the fat spiders near the back steps...;
One sips the evening here like a light sauterne...;
You see so much at the Universe's end; sunsets
Shift on various ridges of its mountain...;
Its night's first shadow embraces its sun...; it seems
Like the last slow dance at a prom for prisms..."
The Tapestry of Leaves: What I Read When I Chance
to Find Three Unfinished Journal Entries, Early Drafts
From The Duchess Of Moisture's Autobiography
I
"I smell the sea — it's like a burning passion
In my heart; at the center of my soul's passion?
Moonlight — at the center of all I am;
I've not absolved any of you from pain..."
II
"'Shines
In prose,... writes in the black ink of felt life,'
My critics will say; and then, 'But she loosened blood
On the world';
I say to them now: 'What I left
Is but testimony to how his sin bloomed
In me, to how lost longing bleeds in me alone — me!'"
III
"Tonight I wish I felt the burly desire
Of prayer, for before his absence ruled my destiny,
Before the fasts of my flesh turned into hunger,
I was innocent as you; now my world swims on fire,
And I've not the heart to fan it on, or blow it out anymore..."
The Tapestry of Images: Where I Find
The Duchess of Moisture Sighing/Singing to Herself
as She Looks at Her Reflection in the Pond
"Under the moon we kissed, where the star trails thin, float
Off under the moon, under the moon of sorrow;
Under the full moon, tethered by our hearts' fate,
I crept under the moon, under the moon of sorrow;
Under the full moon you pulled me down upon you;
Under the moon, it was under the moon of sorrow
You entered me, my thighs rose petals moist with dew
Under the moon, under the moon of my sorrow;
Under the full moon my watery bones,
Motionless, shorn of loving you again,
And my anger, like a knife slit in the throat that shone
Blood stained and still in the waning light, sunk in pain;
I didn't care what would come tomorrow,
Under the moon, under the moon of sorrow..."
Monkey Boy, Returning to Earth as a Single Red Rose,
Helps Out a Friend, With Lascivious Thoughts,
Running on a Country Road
Sorry I'm late getting back here to you, man,
But I had fevers burning out my bones,
Skirt chasing angel chicks and slivers of moon,
Happy-go-luckying my crispy crittered self of one.
So God, sweet Thunder Eyes herself, chucked me downstairs
From Angeltown to being the one lone flower
In a field again, but it's good to taste the air
Just the same — petals glistening in afternoon showers...
I'm here for the one who keeps his heart for his wife.
That's you, running man (She good looking or what?).
I'm here, but you slip just once in a moon's life
I'll bleed so you'll fade away, and I'm the cat
Who keeps his word, since I've been angelcized.
Stick with Ole Red Rose. We'll get you home alright.
My Final Words: Where I Take Notes On My Execution
... The thorny spears of the rose rage from all sides;
Toad soldiers rouse me from the dandelion...
Now the nightmare mire of the pollywog, the insides
Of the pond bottom... mud of centuries my dungeon...
When the Duchess of Moisture pronounces my sentence as she floats,
I think, 'this one will stay mine'... ; my dead father
Has become a frog I dream; "I know you," he croaks;
The pond mist settles; I need his caress here,
See where I'm hurt?... toad breathing near nightfall — no moon
Will come now... parachute throats, colors of helmets...
This tapestry will shroud me by the next noon...;
My executioner will come in moments...;
His web shivers...; a guard's bellow — now the jaws'
Blackness...; now the sentence ends...; thus I was.
The Final Tapestry: (To Be Read After My Death)
Over the pools that make one forgetful,
My life will burn in the goings of seasons;
Forest memories will become things useful,
My life; I will be given robes and crowns,
My life's ending; I will lust for hunger,
My life; I will rise on the wind; like a bride,
Evening's rose hush before starlight, before
My memory of childhood and bread,
Will undress me, and my female beauty will stay;
My life, that transient part that wants to remain,
Will end, as the night will tell a story;
It will start: "As it has always begun,
Your ending will begin in the thin shell
Of departure with a peck of light; you'll feel...."
Mudlark
William Slaughter, Editor
Department of English & Foreign Languages
University of North Florida
Jacksonville, Florida 32224-2645
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fee is charged.
Contents | Mudlark No. 16
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