After Cara Mujer
some silences, like soured linens,
the too long gone on
uncleanness
in dreams, smells become characters
that speak and move
one of you, in a house
of so many empty rooms you offer
but my child will not sleep
a billowing curtain is some
historical, hysterical woman
in a red floral print
she will not quit her haunting
until a tall opera singer
blasts the hallway with her clear
supersonic voice
one of you, you come to my house
while it is being built, I have
to wrestle the door moulding from your hands
and ask you to leave
one of you, I find you dressed as a teacher
in the back pews of religious high school assembly
with my old bible/computer science instructor,
and I mutter through the sermon
and the children ask me to leave
these vapors
and their faces
take so long to wash out
"Self-Portrait as Medusa in Shock, " Jayme Ringleb, Puerto Del Sol Online, is such a lovely and challenging ekphrasis. I won't quote any of it, because there is this seductive kind of movement in the poem, like very classy striptease, a dance of veils, or the pulsing of a jellyfish, that when relaxed, its nearly transparent arms floating away from the body, allows you to see more clearly through what when held tightly concealed those mysterious internal structures. The layers of ekphrasis in this poem are constructed like a nesting doll, each stanza with a lovely similarity, a theme, but each leading more intimately to the interior. The poem begins in the natural world of the jellyfish, which is written over by classical myth that shares the creature's name, which in turn is compared to Biblical stories of resurrection, before the poem finally turns toward memoir. There the poem compares this idea of the classical Medusa, being confronted by her own fatal image t...
Comments