
Epigraph
I dreamt Mary Shelley gave me her lover’s heart
wrapped in paper blood dried into shapes
like shadow puppets behind the scrim shine
the light beam it on the screen pay close
attention as it beats In the back of testis
an epididymis elongated mass of tubes all
the meaning we have to untangle girls
grabbing you by the balls fear of those girls
how they roamed you freeze
numb as an epidural while down on the hard
sea floor fauna grow hands and knees you know
nothing as you plan your attack the rock’s
epigenesis one mineral to another you cannot
destroy everything
The earth will out live
you rejoice take my body and turn it over
and unwrap it O earth lay me down
in the enclosing rock your language will outlast us
Epoch
But these events only serve to make a
X eye grotesquely huge can only encompass
the back of itself in sleep not even grief
simply sleep Christ’s apostles in the garden
where he lay weeping she’s raring, bloody
now as a warrior horse a parade of survivors
behind her in a rasorial daze scratching
at the ground for food rataplan of machine gun fire
the angels, rapporteurs speechless now
at the catastrophes of our own making no need
for a jealous God One last thing
to record the water ouzels walking
on the bottom of the river to hunt they stand firm
against the current to them the water must yield
Terror praesentis
I knew by heart the sky, starlight, drone
Light or sometime silent whir, hushed as noon
When my mother sick slept in her room, sewn
To a garment of fevered dreams like runes
You toss on a foreign ground. Can I outrun
Their eye? Cameras capturing my face, sworn
To this frail country, the land’s daughter and sons
Who raise their fists among the bloodied thorns.
Who will remake this land, melt the hot guns
Into ploughshares? I know each headstone
Every name of every father, mother running
From bullets aimed from the eye above its zone,
Targets, shattered like stars into split bone
I will remain unbowed until I am none.
Sam Silva says
Wonderful poetry and a wonderful portfolio. moving with all of the beauty and ugliness of things!