Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Rhizanthella Gardner

The sensuous signs offer us a new structure
of time, time rediscovered at the heart of lost
time itself, as an image of eternity

~Deleuze

Sequestered in earth, invisible flowering
truffled to fungus in wet dark. Sniff past
the ground, see past the crack in the soil
incise with fingertips the parted dirt, to find
the threatened orchid, sessile and yawning
breath like honey

He rolls away from her and the smell of them
puffs from the sublayer of sheets, meeting places
of bodies, wet and sticky shrink back in the quiet
away from the heat, sound sinks deep into
their inner ears

These hours are torn from their timeline, her heart
from its shape, her bare hands from their image
She is speaking inside herself and each word
burns long enough to clothe his back in what
she can't contain

Slow speed of night moving into the unseen
deadline of morning like a tongue into a mouth
stroking language

10 comments:

Will Windhover said...

Como te quiero, amor mio :-)
y sus obras que pulchra!

This sessiles me more than ever,
dearheart

Blackbird said...

the last three lines leave me beautifully helpless in delicate silence...

Miss Jane said...

Fills me with an unspeakable melancholy and floods me with tears.

Unknown said...

Wow.

bruce dorlova said...

my response to the way this unfolds is sensual, visceral, incoherent, beyond words. i've tried for days to write it and still don't feel i can.

of all your orchids, i love this one best. such a delicate and patient excavation. organic interdependence, delineation and clarity of vision. purity. temporality.

reading, i become conscious of breathing.

word verification suggests i am 'flunded'. sounds about right.

x

Jyoti Mishra said...

Simply loved it !!

Craig said...

I really like how you write Amanda.
Thank you for the link you left me on my blog. I enjoyed it very much

Amanda Joy said...

oh cool, glad you liked it Craig.. Sean M Whelan is awesome isn't he? The Elliot Smith poem is a personal fave. See you at a reading soon.

M40 said...

Exquisite ending!

Chris said...

exquisitely sensual