Tourniquet

Bourgeois 2
She, modeled as callus
to grave palm,
wherein the strictest ledger
of coils
implies
the spoils of ecstasy
held in unwavering contempt
of gods false
or none.

 

(Sculpture by Louise Bourgeois)
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Thy Fearful Symmetry

spider 5
Mothering
its own vigil
and scripture,
a chorus
ordained to practice
the arc of symmetry.

 

(Sculpture by Louise Bourgeois)
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Catechism

spider 4
Cautionary
in her needlepoint grace,
the eyeless widow
kept perfectly still,
tracking the scent of air
to minster her survival
through prey.

 

(Sculpture by Louise Bourgeois)
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May I Have This Dance?

spider 3
Prehistory
repeats itself
through the bootleg cursive
and spirals
of a species
consigned
to the fluency of waltz.

 

(Sculpture by Lousie Bourgeois)
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Woven

spider 1
There once was a spider,
gothic in temperament,
who swallowed a cage
containing your mother’s bones
and the emptiness you craved;
fasting on silence,
your teeth darkened
and grew sharp,
while your hands,
subject to course,
fashioned the strictest symmetry
from absence and lore.

 

(Sculpture by Louise Bourgeois)
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Daisy

daisy
The daisy listens
to the dark pressing inward–
a mute, glistening.
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Ophelia’s Blues – John Biscello

“Ophelia’s Blues” from Arclight, appearing on Free Verse Revolution.

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Refuge

cy-twombly-black
The pyramids,
askew
and caped in starless dark,
architected by a child
who needed a construct
into which he could invite
silence
to keep him absolute company
until the violence stopped.

 

(Artwork by Cy Twombly)
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The Woods

cyanotype 4
In the theater of the absurd,
black widows make silky, haunted love
to depressed, anorexic stalactites
as the radio preys
on sound
to give the moonless
woods
its membraney tableaux of silence.

 

(Cyanotype by Christian Marclay)

 

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Orchid

cutting room floor
Reverence,
trust,
the distance of islands
pinned to space;
every disquieting
cut
moving her closer
and closer
to the irremediable candor
of grace.

 

(Image: Yoko Ono)
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