Elizabeth Pelley, Torso Study (digital collage of pencil sketch)
I keep throwing wrecked pianos
at the moon, fierce dreams,
uttered
gently, of my not dying.
The surface a havoc of split
harps and
black teeth,
lunar dust. And my body there,
or some version of it, alive
in all
that stillness and sun-lit
glare. Perpetual. A surgery—
ah,
Da Vinci—and resurrection.
☨
But then the Devil and me
go walking and the Devil
says,
This World is not
beyond—
as Music—
heavenly contraption,
But
beckons, baffles—
a little noise in the body,
some fleeting
birdsong captured at daybreak
as fractured as Pollock.
As if God had built in the cradle
of my hips
a nest of blackened cells and
left behind a whitening skull,
notched
gear,
☨
cracked lens.
Devil says,
through a Riddle
I
must go—
can I
guess it
gain it
Then she grins. Moon-eyed, wall-
eyed,
the devil grins.
She knows I am nothing more
than a flat head bolt suspended
between
two strings
so when I am touched
I am percussive.
My
Contempt
And Crucifixion
☨
though when the time comes
it will be less some Leonardo
flying
machine
gently lofted and more
the spidery,
jointed bones
of the wings. I’ll be the egg
in the nest, chick
in the nest.
The Devil
Blushes
Plucks at a twig
says longing hangs in my heart
like
a ragged white dress,
☨
a negative
way—
from the Pulpit—
so put it down, leave it off,
river
to river it seeks a marriage
in the blood that is its unwinding.
It will be all
twined strings soon,
stemmed to flatted thunks.
I slip and rally, echo.
Think of my body prone
in the hands
of a seated god. Meanwhile
the Devil
and I go walking, dead
☨
art and dead art, amongst all
this living, its
Strong
Narcotics
its music, unappeased,
as the poet says.
Hummingbird, mad mouth,
at
the Buddleia davidii sucking
at all the sugars. Butterflies,
like perfect enlightened machines,
in the same.
Then silence, stillness,
rag of the body, roll
of the body,
through tines of spearing daylight...
still the Tooth
at the soul—