Persona Non Vera

Persona Non Vera

We're just sitting

all of us, after the party

relicts of a game; the courtesan, the too-

precocious child, Our Lady of Sorrows,

posing, dumb as to tongue but

telling everything

how she picked us up,

one by one, how we could not soak

tears, became fears, shaken

and thrown, fluid in stone, tilting

cracked heads, rolling ripple-

glass stares.

Loved we were, one

by one, till each grew tiresome, tight,

fractured and outgrown, but we can't go.

We sit nodding, all of us, cropped, collected,

had, forgotten, listening; showing

everything.

~December 2013

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Interpretations with Margaret: The Photography of Jennifer MacNeill

Margaret Bednar leads us to the fantastic(literally) photographic work of Jennifer O'Neill, who has generously shared some of her work with us. You can see more of it HERE on her website, as well as HERE on her flick'r page

(Please forgive any typos or mistakes--the screen is an ailing, dim memory of a display atm.)

Image: melancholy, copyright Jennifer MacNeill, All Rights Reserved

Used with permission.

The Night The Gargoyles Sang

The Night The Gargoyles Sang

It was in the first half of my life
when I was busy bleeding, that
the Princess gave me a frozen brussels sprout
at the state dinner and told me
to warm it for her.

I took it to the tech desk for
some heat, but it only melted
vanilla, into double dips
dripping out cyber chocolate chips
soft and sloppy on the spreadsheets.

I ran into the lonely west wing,
haunted by the Headless Bride
where the gargoyles came inside
out of the rain, to explain, but their
song was a stone in a rowboat to me

and I took their place on the roof, still hungry.
At around about this time I came
to the second half of my life
and was listening to you tell me
that things had gotten out of hand

since you'd been gone. I couldn't help
but notice you'd burned your eyebrows off
or the katydids you'd put in your waistcoat
pocket, hopping flamingo pink.
and so

I paid no attention, opened the cage
and let all the muskrats out. Or,
they might have been guinea pigs;
it was a difficult dream
to pin down.

~April 2013

Image: Lupo [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Pawned

Pawned

or

Lust Among the Chess Pieces

Black knight of the cross

checkered demarcations,

Master of airs above the ground,

you caprioled over my board in full panoply

rattling the table with the

arrhythmic syncopation of

your strabismic stallion's hooves,

lance proudly gripped in fisted mail

as ready to conquer as cavort.

You swept away the pawns

outmaneuvered the Bishop, but

when the rook screeched his mock

from the high castle corner, 

your stiff King of ebony kings

fell dead on the milk blue breast

of the rose white Queen.

July 2012

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Sunday Challenge: Photography of Gemma Wiseman

Also, late,

 for A Word with Laurie, who featured the word 'demarcation' in her challenge Friday.

Process notes: 'Airs above the ground"  is a comprehensive dressage term for various jump movements the horse performs with two or all four legs off the ground. A capriole is one such, according to dictionary.com "..a movement in which the horse jumps up with its forelegs well drawn in, kicks out with its hind legs in a horizontal position in the air, and then lands again on the same spot..."

Image: Outdoor Chess Game, © Gemma Wiseman

Used with permission