qarrtsiluni

A furious-pink cyclamen
now grows in the green
ceramic cube with no
escape for water. I had
a fuzzy old brain
cactus that couldn’t
survive so long
a wet season,
although I kept it
as if it were alive
sometimes using the pot
for a doorstop in summer.
When I finally let go
and dumped the papery
body into a corner
of the garden
by the rosemary
and the woodpile,
I discovered someone
had mixed the dirt
with styrofoam peanuts.
You could almost see
how the mind works.

by Katherine Durham Oldmixon

Download the MP3

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

(Click on image to view at larger size.)

by Katherine Durham Oldmixon

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Spears of new jonquils push through black
mulch beside sweet-green hair of garlic,

nets of shivering rosemary and sage,
leafless stalk of a prickly old climber.

I turn a palm of dark crumbling winter
leaves into damp soil, mix in crushed eggshells,

coffee grounds dried in a ceramic bowl
from a week of mornings. In the latent

garden ferns send furry runners under
cover to network with iris tubers,

bulbous elephant ears, blind-white onions.
If I poke the lean edge of my trowel

into earth, decaying smells of birthing
rise from what lies beneath that skin to mine.

by Katherine Durham Oldmixon

Download the MP3

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

(Click photo to view at larger size.)

by Katherine Durham Oldmixon

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

by Katherine Durham Oldmixon

If you can’t see the movie, you need to download Flash.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

This summer morning, two languorous butterflies suckled
the hummingbird feeder; wings unfolded and folded now

and then as if they dreamed they were flying, the way
a dog asleep in a sunny spot of yard runs a meadow.

Where does a butterfly sail in her red nectar reverie?
I have seen them exult in the winds of the Caribbean;

sheer wings glisten with sea spray, tremble in currents
with that wild insect certainty that inspired Icarus.

On the road to Cobá, they drifted in clouds like spring
sun motes swirling before the windshield, slight and pale

Mexican Yellows, Orange Fritillaries; iridescent Morphos
imbricate paths in my memory through crumbling ruins.

That day we couldn’t move for fear of crushing them;
tiptoeing across a quivering sea of shimmering wings,

we urged them to fly: what could they be thinking?
Suicide, to sojourn in the parking lot of a tourist stop.

I thought of my grandmother’s tray, gift from a traveling
relative, fine wood framing amputated wings—

dust to dust under glass, keepsake of a time when
someone flew over an ocean, someone wingless arrived home.

by Katherine Durham Oldmixon

Audio production by Arturo Lomas Garza
Download the MP3

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Look how they cluster on paper
nests built of their spit and feed
their brood on stunned bodies
of butterfly young before sucking
nectar from shallow cup figworts,
stealing honey stuff from golden
feet of lyrical bees.

See these who craft elaborate mud
knots so dense they seem fact
sing themselves shrill anxious songs.
Their discharge warp-binds weavers;
their secretions quick-seal winged kin
in pulpy tombs. Some lay histories

in their sisters’ urns, eat their eggs
to replace with their own drone
warriors, who devour one another.
Listen: the blood-red hum
of mandibles, translating truth.

by Katherine Durham Oldmixon

Audio production by Arturo Lomas Garza
Download the MP3

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

by Katherine Durham Oldmixon

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::