Blue Ridged

Exhausted and spent

In the wake of a day

Of banal, grudging effort.

My head indented

By a dust coat dashboard.

I looked up

As a ray of Virginia sweet

Nuzzled my face.

And cupped my eyeline

To your tremulous majesty

Which I ritually ignore.

The blue frost was kissing the

Apricot swallow of

Your curvaceous mysteries

Your unremitting opiatic breasts

The terrain where Gods nestle.

And so I shifted gears, in pursuit of your

Illimitable meanderings, your

Foliated miracles, your,

Wildness, my need.

In the heat of gut hewn banjo bleed

And uncompromising blaze of

Zydeco Riff-Lick Reel

O! Sweet spectral steel!

Connubial land was calling me home

Genital earth murmured soft song

I heard its plea

Felt the gravitas

An ancient weeping psalm

For a thousand heaving griefs….

Periwinkle backwash

Cerise, tamarind,

goldenrod

breakers…

Here

Sequoyah, gave Cherokee

Words to Self-Negate

Betrayal's erasure

Here

In vale of Catalouchee

Your white mountain brother

Stood holler fast, bloodlust seethe

At encroaching modern

maggot

therapies.

How you have been scarred

Here

In Our War of all Wars.

Jackson's '62 campaign

Where blue-woolen warriors

Were helplessly plowed down.

Where the horrors of Manassas

Stirred horrors unborn

Where The Wilderness' hours

Gutted boys as drones.

Where Bitter April

Appomattox

Left millions linger

Entombed.

Your ensanguined beauty

Your afflicted Blue heart,

Your delirious dotage

Your pious fidelity.

So fierce

So fiercely

Cried.

Believe me,

This day

I embraced

All

Your destitutions.

So, now, Sweet forever,

Hear your

Lullaby.

'Oh…

…Shenandoah.

I Love your Daughter

Your Babe, you rolling river

Oh Shenadoah

I Love your Daughter.

And

No,

I'll never go

'Cross the wide Missouri'.

Plato's Cave

In your shadow world

You might take me as a prisoner

For I do not believe in the duality of

perceptual reality

Or the 'thing' of/in itself.

Protoplasmic molecular conjunctions

Ephemeral constitutives

Conceptual, sentient contortions.

You challenge my

Incomprehension of Form

of Idea.

But all you do is verify

You never loved.

Caffeinated

Through cracked

Monday daybreak

Zombies stalk

Underground portals

As

February pincers

Skewer

Thin woolen finery.

Heeding demand

Of aloft looming

Obelisks.

Where

Cubicled Insignificance

Mangles

Sense

Value

Time.

But there within

Paces

Lies the animus

Alchemy.

Caramel Macchiatos

Overfrothed cappuccinos

And pumpkin mint lattes

With cheesed muffin snares.

Foamy and steaming

Newly baptized "professionals"

Reach same grey destinations:

Duty-bound

and

Blood rushed.

Constance Stadler is the co-editor of the e-zine Eviscerator Heaven. With numerous publications in various print journals and anthologies, her most recent work appears in Ditch, Gloom Cupboard and ken*again. As a political anthropologist specializing in North Africa, and classically trained violinist, her influences are multiform. Work in formative years with the late poet Gwendolyn Brooks was a seminal influence, but no less so than Sufi Dervish dancers, and the challenges of mastering Bruch's first concerto. Her chapbook Tinted Steam was published by Shadow Archer Press, and her book Sublunary Curse is available from erbacce-press.

Read more work from Constance Stadler.