She said "Be careful, that burning moon
will char your ferral fingers"
Did I listen?
Did I touch
it?
Just about.
The belly of it, it was so electric, it was indigo blue,
high voltage? Never mind. It was the shine
that was mine. And I always walk tightrope,
above
the self. Never in self.
Not That self.
I said to her, "am not afraid.
Fire can't burn fire". She said,
"but
he's an air. Will smother you, put you out. Fire,
it is
elsewhere & you need the ground to burn on."
Her twinned fingers pointed at
the door - it was shut.
Behind it,
a fool stood unquestioning.
He did not knock. It did not knock
back either. Some bigness did
knock him out.
She said, don't open the door to the idiot
who comes and lets the waves pass by, untouched.
It was the moon she pointed at again,
the twin moon with a half-smile.
and so many were howling
for his second coming, the Fisher King,
breathing red blood and blue wound.
The questioned dawned.
Whom does it serve?
Compress. Coldly.
Ma chère fille adorée, tu me manques tant...*
maman wrote,
her stunted fists rattle in my head,
the refined slit cut, how lonely the map
of spilt red roads. The edge of preciousness,
passed on the toothpick to a closed window facade -
someone to lie on the white lace, silver plate, a party
freak fashioned velvet, the gift of lilies,
passed
away.
Maman dished it all out,
and
they
ate.
What was given.
Wine on the table,
burgundy inundation, high to low,
on pink flesh lino.
Trickling steady-slow.
Hush of mouth open, closed.
Brothel-maman clutches lipstick, day dying
lambent, ashen. The guard-house figure-head.
Exhibition of strokes - 'Chair de ma chair'.
This is me on a show, a macabre creation of her brush.
A line, a curve - barb-wire bones, black print letters, unread.
Eyes wide. Blink not.
A mortuary theft, morning mist,
uterus spread,
freshly baked bread.
Sliced.
It moves between us.
Elixirs of tenderly burnt Gods,
ingredience of appeasement. Edible masterpiece.
See that door and drink. Eat, fill up
and up, burst men,
the pleasures, unclothed. Fattened.
Ewe. Not lamb. Lamb drunk blood.
Her mouth is full of it. Full of me. The compress.
---
translations of 1st line of the poem ( Ma chère fille adorée, tu me manques tant...)my dear daughter, I miss you....
and of the title of the 'Exhibition' (chair de ma chair) - flesh of my flesh
Within the radius
Within the pristine radius of bodiless apparitions
the red ant exodus
in the clockwise turn of tongue
happens, just
happens.
Stone flicks down the figure,
the constant curve of immolation.
Only
the river is real, she
bursts the banks, the hungered
reeds shiver, perfect applied maths of sliding
the mud paths of pressed in movements,
flawed, nomadic subtract particles
by retraced birth in the doorway,
smothered, and full of rushing vagaries.
The key-hole vision - skinned
whisper's forgiven array of moths as its melting sigh of passion
pushes forwards the millionth fracture of transmutations -
the metamorphoses of locked haematic Gehenna.
Its Nine circles of lacerated
fear,
known in fingers, tap frank language out, passed on
and on to the scrape yard, only the recondite,
circle running in revolt
will speak of it
inwardly...
The rain will fill their mouth, we'll feel them
reflex quietus
with no rigor mortis,
we'll observe the method - the rising of
that strange corpus delicti of apostate un-being
as it will rupture the seal.
Petra Whiteley immigrated to UK in 1993 from the Czech Republic, where she studied economics, Czech, English and literature. Her poetry has appeared in Osprey, The Glasgow Review, ETC, Seven Circle Press and their CircleShow vol.1 printed anthology, The Gloom Cupboard, Eviscerator Heaven, Unlikely Stories 2.0, Counterexample Poetics, Apt, Eleutheria and are due too appear in Clockwise Cat, Paraphilia, The Toronto Quarterly and The Recusant. She is also a prose editor for Eviscerator Heaven. Several of these e-zines also published her articles on political and current issues (left-wing position), history and methods of literary and poetic movements as well as essays on and reviews of current poets, lyricists - with more forthcoming. Ettrick Forest Press published her first poetry collection The Nomad's Trail in September 2008. The Moulding of Seers - chapbook of her poetry is due to be published by the Shadow Archer Press in 2009. She is currently working on a children's book with visual artist Steve Viner.
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