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a journal of literature & art

The Literary Review

Issue 10                    Page 40

Bruises

These were unexpected.

Bruises – yes – I was surprised

to see the blue-yellow hurt

like a badge on the shoulders.

Bruises, bruises here from the body on the body,

but not in violence, only intimacy too intense

for the heat of its own speed.

Perhaps this is the way steam burns,

a slowly unnoticed meeting

& then the skin all ablaze.

Surely it is silent fire & hurricanes our eyes are

when we meet as runes before the wake of parting.

Empathy, chemistry—–

through the spirit & through the flesh

as if they are the stigmata of living wounded

to heal one another, as if touch itself

could all be slide-placed, microscopic

like stains breathing viral.

Volcanoes erupt from the colors

& they also are bruise-true

while I want & wait.

Singing Beyond Penance

The vocal chords tighten, but with flexibility

for those notes lowering, then growing higher,

opening the throat which choked on so much to say

at last in this way finding the means to breathe.

How what pressed against the diaphragm breaks

so the squeezed lungs, released from such a cage,

are instruments bellows-wide with a clarity

for what was lodged down being like

the heart’s mind caught on a hamster wheel

turning by burning with a rapidly cycling face,

laugh, words, gestures, frame – the most painful scenery

in that entangling emotional wilderness

shared with no other soul while the one

whose an obsession, accidental, remains scot-free,

never thinking of the other, let alone having

an inkling of feeling.

This music here releases all of that as a funnel upright  –

tornado of torpor passionate, but also controlled frenzy,

an aria spirit-freeing the choice between rivers, mythic,

of Lethe & Mnemosyne.

Will these syllables sung lose themselves to waves

which bring forgetting, a balm of fog to later fall

in such anguish again, dumb to the first time

blank as a lamb some sky of steel takes?

No, moan blues, clarify, remembering to articulate everything

in currents of western turbulence to rise from shining,

bathed to love wisely, ears on a harmonious tune

composed so far deep from within

that to sing of it is quenching as peaceful Paradise attained.

© Jadina Lilien: Wile With Spirit-1

Pass, Pass, Pass

Wild Violet, a midnight dig, alchemy in it,

the spade hitting earth, a showering of silt

from the verdant lit by flashlight

where neighbor’s butter-pat windows will not see

this wilderness witchery or my nails of clay

through the fertile purple & pungent paper bag.

Pass, pass, pass—–

how it all falls away with vulnerable will under this cold Spring half-moon

every loneliness must escape the close physicality of.

Oh, all you happy-sad drunkards, all you bar, you phone presences,

you lit Karaoke voices, you whispers of velvet, you cloth textures,

you loves long past not to be the hostage of, nor the carved tree

initials for, or the inscriptions in water, the spirits rippling sheer

where soul met soul or sidestepped to salvage a drowning life

in the charms & price of talking alcohol…

So these woods find me, little Wolfsbane Eden

in our metropolitan harbor, our suburb polite

past the yowling hungers, the silent echolocation

where no, not any longer, will I crawl about.

The games are old but nothing to the rites Ancients protect

by this solo garden shoring ghosts for prayers & the wiser difference

leaving all the loves which could not be saved by any faith of mine.

Night Crossing

No vehicle for this

though picture still a ship’s rocking berth,

depths of darkness, waves cresting with the whiteness

of clouds in moonlight nudged by the nose of a jet.

Imagine being in that too, rising from sails unfurled

to find engines rumbling, a compressed hum

with wings on either side, each a Dorsal

for that metal-encased sky whale.

Yes, better to grasp for something as peaceful,

even being hidden in a lorry or jeep

under blankets, crates of fruit,

napping in a pretend game

without apprehension of check points,

chase scenes, the seizing of papers,

bullets and a kneeling before their cold send off

from behind.

That’s how vulnerable this is truly,

openness, an outing, the walking skin itself

vigilant for going on is the only thing to do.

Migrant, ease fear by remembering gardening

and each backstreet, covert field here

just more acreage to complete tasks in:

weeding, say, between brief rains,

an invigorating breeze changing direction,

this course, that, of wet curtains sweeping,

each silvery bead in descent cooling air

while soil steams.

Some pressure is being let out,

something broth-rich fragrant

as vegetables in a pot,

while above there’s an uncovering of blue swathes

clearing the head in buttery sun when sweating

effort takes a break from yanking tough tufts

to let edible stalks, leaves, berries,

shells, pods, kernels, casings

breathe, breathe, breathe…

Migrant be there, moment to moment, step

after step, Belief tilling life from the toiling

with the faith of a mustard seed

that harvest will come one fine safe day.

Kick

Kick in.

Kick in the—

(fill in those blanks…)

Hey, does the kangaroo of you really know your own lengths?

Yes, feeling the pouch, that cocoon where you often beat

unknowingly hurt but also swim in comfort,

tapping melodies & rhythms with nurturance

& further birth in the end to the still ultimate umbilical link—–

Yes, why should it be any different now

no matter what’s kicking at you tonight or today?

Why should it be when you are still kicking back – aren’t you –

even if in withdrawal tantrums?

Isn’t that also flight?  The vines of Thrush? 

The pebble driveway sparrows & their grand pecking

some resonance close to the sound of rain?

Oh you, ever-kicker, even when kicked,

& ticking with soccer chorus-line-Rockettes,

you know death too might just be one more blow,

one more door to take, so while you are going,

breathless but a breathing being,

kick low, kick high, each an effervescence.

Living

This hem of

silence keeps in

hymns, doggerel, the rustling

of a world: that self-contained vase.

Up against it, seconds conspire,

resurrect, our time

an interpolation, that

racket of white sound.

Conversion is work, these attempts to grasp views,

voices caught in a beehive sea Gulliver shakes

like a radio gone awry.

Next he tries putting an eye

to the scope curving fingers form.

Darkness, then light squeaking,

the panorama of cracks with, occasionally,

some crystallization as if of a dream which

in a moment

becomes

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