Fragments from the Gone World
I
The gods are far too literal minded :
Ithmonike of Pellene
pregnant for three entire years
after imploring the god Asklepios at Epidaurus.
You silly woman, he said upon her return,
why did you not say
you wanted to give birth?
II
Fingernail-clipping moon
Above dustbin horsetail cloud.
A small moth ascends
As day descends
into darkness.
Dawn breaks
My heart
Apart. Opens
up the night
Like a knife wound
Spilling red across the horizon.
III
Great Egyptian Ptah, lord of creation,
spoke out loud his green-skinned imagination :
and the universe hurled off his tongue into being.
IV
Rose taffeta unwinds
from her spinning dancer’s dress
You’ve hurt me
for the last time, she says.
A rogue’s gallery of blackguards
lines the walls of her memory
like a portico around her cerebellum’s
cloister as baroque violoncellos squawk
in the nautilus hollows of her ears
like a dead sea of ancient tears.
You are gone now in dust
and I am still here, dancing.
from Eavesdropping in Plato’s Café
Featured Print: Ship Wreck by Linda Lyke
Newfoundland Paintings: Ship Wreck is from a series of paintings that convey the struggle for survival of the Beothuk Natives and European settlers of Newfoundland and memorializes the images of both cultures with their complex topography of land and sea.