Thursday, January 4, 2007

"Deer Magic" in Dec. 31 Lawrence J-W

Phantasms:

they appear

by stealth

and disappear.

They shift into vision —

glimpse of antlers,

dark tails,

and then gone,

the air empty.

In the wetlands

we find a print

crimped in mud,

weighted by a rack.

I believe in them:

mottled bodies

not quite formed

in mist

then gone

before rain clouds

drop over us all.

— Denise Low

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2006/dec/31/poets_showcase/?arts

2 comments:

  1. Dear Magic

    What is a soul if not an invisible wake
    From a boat nobody can prove exists
    On a river of mist and dark clouds?

    I was at a carnival when I saw souls
    Lining up by a man who was guessing
    Weight for a dollar with a butcher’s scale.

    They wore the shoes of nurses
    Who caught amputated limbs
    In World War II, their angel wings

    And lifejackets down around their knees,
    Which were bruised from kneeling.
    The barker was robbing them blind,

    Winking to a woman who could have
    Been Mary except for the tattoos.
    Later she rode through a ring of fire

    On a dirt bike. They had an inside joke
    They kept giggling about, probably
    Some debauchery of the Carney underworld.

    On the trip home, a buck running along
    Side the car was gone so quickly
    It was like it was never there.

    Its scared eyes told of a life of deception,
    The land wet with rain pulled up from Lethe
    By clouds that could shape-shift into anything.

    Everything’s a big secret in the world
    Of phantasmagorical presentations and possibility.
    Just go to the graveyard and ask around.

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  2. Fun. I like the translation of images into another toolkit of language. Let me know if you can publish this anywhere. Deer Woman is a major allusion here, and you translate that to Mary. Great! Denise

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