Archive
Ekphrasis 4: Lori Witzel + Mikey Delgado
by Lori Witzel
*
In a barn in P———– in spring
What happened here is this—the long
smell of the sacking and the engine oil
across the many years and the scrape
of the concrete on my writhing back
and the throat-blocked voice breathing stop
and the plea HELP scratched into a timber
by my adored mouth and the roar of a tractor
after lunch across the fields and some brave bird
coming to the tree to herald spring as we
by its music are dragged across the gritted floor
our hips rising and twisting and sunlight
of March quality striping the gaps at the edges
of the vertical banded doors and this—what
is it—apprehension of a shotgun death flitting
across the mind as the farmer hoists to his shoulders
my white wintered legs and denies me life
and channels into me his own shoaling river
and calls me beautiful beautiful beautiful
and kneels like the crucifix of a weathered man
with ankles in his hands which move as if salting meat.
That winter
That winter the cows would surround us
In the darkness, feeling like omens
Against our fearful skins, fat tongues unrolling
To taste us, fermented straw-mist on their breaths
And ours, them coming through the thick mists
On our hillside, us across fields returning
To the cottage from drowning our terror.
Sometimes on no-moon nights the jigsaws
Of their hides appeared so quietly from the dark
There was almost no time to scream and scream
As they bumped and pushed us from their peace.
Now they are long dead. Still their generations
Do the same. Their children know us, harry us.
by mikey
A father, cradling his firstborn, reflects on his previous murders
Where are my other daughters or sons?
I ask as if I, learning of them, of those grains
Waiting for my arms and lips and heart, didn’t turn
My heart from them, and instead rushed here and there,
Even to cold rooms in buildings named (can you believe?)
After saints, to plead for freedom from them. Please!
You can save us! But they are always there,
These ghosts; they have followed me everywhere
Ever since, taking me to mirrors, showing me to myself.
My sweet darling, here into my once red hands
I’m weeping for love of you, and them.
by mikey
qarrtsiluni 