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Tenaya Darlington X-Ray Study of a Contortionist |
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Consider the daffodil’s stiff stance, the head – that numb lion – sacked out on its stem, its pollen spent on the counter around the bottle, like a message in Braille: I couldn’t stand around waiting. Consider the stalk, how it rises with its yellow message, how the flower blooms like a circle of teeth from paper – amazing – in just one hour, there on my sill, like Barlowe on stage, her father in the wings, watching. She becomes gold music, her spine the trombone, a note locked in bone, one leg pressed against her neck, holding Durvasa’s pose. If you x-ray a flower, the bloom forms a dress pattern. When a child’s spine has memorized circles, the pattern reveals neither spine nor flower but a rugged hillside, blurred, dotted with angel worms. The effort is not to make out a message, but to train yourself not to look back. The bones, dyslexic, cannot undo their twisting. Hinge by hinge, they snap. Slat by slat, they collapse to the floor of the body, like a staircase, window blinds. Not like in real life, where a blossom moved by a coming storm, tilts its head, and with lust for life, plants a trail of breadcrumbs for later, then slips through itself.
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Arts & Letters is supported by |
Arts & Letters Journal of Contemporary Culture Campus Box 89 Georgia College & State University Milledgeville, GA
31061 Phone: (478) 445-1289 E-mail: al@gcsu.edu
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GC&SU is a member of |
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