Infernos
Past wildfire cremation
Ramulose and splayed
There is nothing
Left to see
Save black rattle vapors
And umber charred lattices
My withering hands
So notched and abraded
Remind me
Of ashen agonies
Immolating lies
Stillbirths and losses
My crenellated dreams
In the
Stroll of
Looming
Disintegrations.
Me, myself and… I
Dusk swallows sunless sullen
Unwashed coal hemp shroud
Over shredded heart
throbbing in oblivion
of corporeal inutility.
In this impotent thicket
of cankerous time
every glass magnifies
the very avatar
of inconsequence.
My womb rot ~ a murdering kiln
No child strains for cuddling
Rot reek steeps in pustule paths
No, no companion at the hearth
Sanguineous self-centered
thought
Sequestered by inertia.
Save cobra-strike synapses
Encoding
Carrion
Urgency.
Unforgiven, Unforgotten
In
Virginia
The War of Northern Aggression
Lives in Nigh, a Squinted Eye
Pulsating from Aorta to Georgia
Deep within
And back again…
My Yankee-Spewing, Carpet-Bagging,
Language Befouling Tongue
Clearly
Renders me Unfit
For Civility.
Your Mortally Wounded
Dignity.
Pulls on my Humanity
Although,
If could, I Would
Have Butchered You
With all that I Have
And Am.
But though the Air is rift with
Acrid
Sacrifice.
And the Ground
Magenta Brown.
I know
That Nothing has changed.
Save nurturance of Hallowed
Feral Hatred
For what we think
We Know.
Hands
Hands
Do you remember feeling a face
In fever
As a wild blind child?
With shivering
Throe of
Fingertip vibrato learnings
…cheeks/lips/eyes…
a forehead wisp
a drunken dervish dance.
Ears
Do you recall the savagery
Of assailing lanceolate
Kiss of a whisp of
…name….
Womb warm and flash fired surges
Consuming flecks of last resistance
Of stilled surrendered self.
All Eden
Light
Enfolding
unending
endless
endlessness…
Lips
So parched… so fallow…
Do you, can you, recall?
Enfleshed impress in
Babylonian unguent
Sorcery of
Kindred annihilation.
Eyes, oh eyes…
Why do you stand and trace each lash,
Etching fragment of a profile
In a world inverted
As a white lined
feathered
impress
Ignites
The furious awakening
of long entombed
sylvan
sylph.
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.
