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March 22
BIRTH PALETTE
Lizard air lichens ivy driven urchin’s pry to a pounce.
Scribbled terrestrial traor, the paw actions tainy blee
scoa, blue scog. In eat, gashed harmonica stresses to
skull icon, jigged but shower, Crushtative bundles,
Doe, Owl, the Hare mantled in a planetary pivot.
Vulture-Jar, dragonfly & waterbeetle are we,
each veil of the glide species.
Sheer Shoe-Shoe darks, Weem Cyclicity,
Threads & Wisps.
Yesterday’s loaf soaks on the spindle,
sky blue large the sea’s purple Octopi bickerings
re-in-indigo dozens indignant.
Options Falter.
Rodent, Bat Swing Mare-O-Crow-O-Crane
Midscales cache,
untilled kestrels carded,
ancestrous to a Song.
Earth scalded, wired lame.
Yew Hung Abbatoir Voltages.
Wouldja Pouches, sun crawl. Snail, Serpent,
Wren stroke of this tiny wobble entrailed massively.
Rune Retro whiskers congregate, blood squeak of the herd
do fruit
& jabbing trill,
flood plains.
Lagoon remnants bleeding salmon aquatic nocturnal warms,
wanted,
curved.
Deers – early as early a knifing in livid Ever
fens’ve powder Spider fishes ground,
flew turbid
stealthy sweet smoke heart size.
Dread.
Dulled.
Pebble,
putty tone,
Vessel
differing den pegs –
Pheasant
the dark moon turns.
Ricochet, straw cauldrons, water sickle
rooting turbid Rails.
Pig gathers in the lemon.
Cow, later of wood.
Lioness, ’twas all moon down in the brainstem,
tally-sticks –
Jackal woke fresh, key made from Butterfly depths,
the Chrysalis,
the Spider.
Treasury Futures.
Asterisms liced from the Skull.
Nerve Surge.
Expulsions to a Rope.
© Maggie O'Sullivan, 2003. March 06
This is one, I wish I had written, it is that good.
A Myth of Devotion
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by by Louise Glück
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When Hades decided he loved this girl
he built for her a duplicate of earth,
everything the same, down to the meadow,
but with a bed added.
Everything the same, including sunlight,
because it would be hard on a young girl
to go so quickly from bright light to utter darkness
Gradually, he thought, he'd introduce the night,
first as the shadows of fluttering leaves.
Then moon, then stars. Then no moon, no stars.
Let Persephone get used to it slowly.
In the end, he thought, she'd find it comforting.
A replica of earth
except there was love here.
Doesn't everyone want love?
He waited many years,
building a world, watching
Persephone in the meadow.
Persephone, a smeller, a taster.
If you have one appetite, he thought,
you have them all.
Doesn't everyone want to feel in the night
the beloved body, compass, polestar,
to hear the quiet breathing that says
I am alive, that means also
you are alive, because you hear me,
you are here with me. And when one turns,
the other turns—
That's what he felt, the lord of darkness,
looking at the world he had
constructed for Persephone. It never crossed his mind
that there'd be no more smelling here,
certainly no more eating.
Guilt? Terror? The fear of love?
These things he couldn't imagine;
no lover ever imagines them.
He dreams, he wonders what to call this place.
First he thinks: The New Hell. Then: The Garden.
In the end, he decides to name it
Persephone's Girlhood.
A soft light rising above the level meadow,
behind the bed. He takes her in his arms.
He wants to say I love you, nothing can hurt you
but he thinks
this is a lie, so he says in the end
you're dead, nothing can hurt you
which seems to him
a more promising beginning, more true.
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"A Myth of Devotion" from Averno by Louise Glück.
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