The Sacred
The body is bless-ed as the sacred, the
sacrum fulcrum, yoga
pose of the rocking boat, where balanced
on the abdomen, flying arms
somehow reach the ankles, a sacredness
also of tentacles, frost
seaweed shingles which overhang caves.
Inside a vortex
of water among jellyfish sweeps in
a twister, a trunk,
lunges and sucks among those inmost
passages, dark rock
of the heart. The sacred language of
the body is
this thickness, white as water from a
hose, the pressure
making clearness a color, dense as spume,
the pouring, layers and layers
on blacktop after the fire’s
out. Temporary, a wading
till the grate swallows it, the firemen
tired, a bit
officious, roll up canvas and fasten
chutes, ladders, extenders with brass gadgets. Most
loveable when least heroic, like the Zen priests, shedding
their black
vestments, shaved boyheads emerging, the meditators after, brushing
the lint off their cushions.
Monica Raymond is a poet and playwright, sometime essayist and photographer, general artist/teacher type, currently based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her play A to Z won the 2011 Ruby Lloyd Apsey Award for plays about race/ethnicity. She has now had work in 15 issues in a row of qarrtsiluni, which means that her work has passed muster with 15 different editorial teams—an unprecedented achievement.
