Donna Snyder founded the Tumblewords Project in
1995 and continues to organize its free weekly workshops and other events. Her
poetry collections include Poemas ante el Catafalco: Grief and Renewal
from Chimbarazu Press, I Am South
from Virgogray Press, and The Tongue Has its Secrets from NeoPoiesis
Press. Her poetry and book reviews appear in many publications including
such journals and anthologies as Red Fez,
Queen Mob’s Teahouse, VEXT Magazine, Mezcla, BorderSenses, Puerto del Sol, Inanna’s Ascent, and Speak
the Language of the Land. She practiced law for 33 years, representing
indigenous people, people with disabilities, and immigrant workers.
Eso
The noise inside your head sings counterpoint to that in mine. I
love it when you answer my thoughts. It makes me feel as if you hold me in the
hollow of your throat, in your navel, between your scapular muscles. Inside
your mouth, held like hot liquor. Tesla waves emanating from me to the receiver
that is between your eyes.
The sound of your thoughts spread through my body like code. The
shape of your hand appears on the moon of my mente, like a pictograph left for
others to ponder the inherent ephemerality of beauty. I feel your teeth on the
back of my shoulder. You grab my hair and pull my head around to the side so I
can see just what you are doing. Eso.
I won't forget. I finger the proof that you existed. Here, and
here, and here, as well.
Nothing is never nothing
A message
written for a bottle with no
ocean
The body atremble, the mouth a
desert
Sirens so far away but still
the jaws grind
Not even the dogs know what
dogs always know
Hands thrust into what becomes
a salivating mouth
Birds fall, frozen, from the
sky to unyielding ground
Words without meaning
Ask the women, they all will
tell you
An utterance shuts out
objective meaning
Oxygen sucks the life out of a
lying mouth
Not even the shadow knits
truth from facts
The first page missing, the
first line begins
. . . but that was long after Night arose from nothing
Chaos,
Dark void of space
counter-intuitively comprising
Earth, Wind,
Water, and Fire, the gods both
spirit and being,
but their answers illusory,
begging the question
Something from nothing, they
say
yet nothing was ever made of
something
Chaos,
the first something from which
gods appeared,
and from them, everything in
the known world
A vacuum that yielded only
luminous flashes
yet gave birth to Night and her
brother, Darkness
And when Night and Darkness
coupled, Night
gave birth to Light and Day,
Sleep and Death
Time killed Space, his father
Night, hidden away in her
cave, made oracles,
listened to drums, the raucous
timpani, the tzils,
the celestial bodies' thrum,
as her daughter judged,
moving the universe in the
rhythms of ecstatic dance
Time dreamed, prophesied the
future, drunk on honey,
oblivious to Retribution that
chained him within Night’s cave
A blank book
no longer wholly incomplete
Ink now scratched over ruled
lines
filled with fragments, a
two-lane highway
Leaves plucked from a boll of
cotton
A vignette of tin roofs and
stucco shacks
A stalk of bronze maize
braided to the dusty green
An artist's eye
no better than that of a witness
in a court of law
Each untrustworthy as the
basis for a just outcome
The mere act of observation
will change the observed
Time lies incognizant of
retribution yet prophesying still
With neither bottle nor
letter, the world spins in a lonely sea
the
water, even there
Solitary is split in two
between sunrise
and the impartial moon.
Someone told her
the moon had seas,
so she constructed a vision
that luna held the might-have
in never-water’s arms.
In the palm of shattered night,
words fell as exhausted moths,
brief about dishonest suns.
In this way she came to sleep,
weary of change, squeezing dreams
into the small spaces
between setting and rising.
Yeah!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Chuck.
DeleteThank you, Chuck!
DeleteThank you very so much! I'll look for your blog.
ReplyDelete