Salt, Silver, and Blood

See you soon!

If it’s been over ten years since you last tried
black licorice, you may now love it.
If you come across a bus stop in mid-December
someone may have written i heart you with
their finger on the window’s condensation.

It may be fresh enough you can tell
where she pressed her forefinger down
hardest and whether or not she wore gloves.

It may be that what you think is love
Is no more so than a clump of pink insulation
hanging strangely in a trashed storefront
is a freshly butchered ham.

If you sleep like a manger scene
boxed up in the attic for half a century
you may be in love, have some rare
form of bipolar, or both, plus really thirsty.
There is an explanation for the river’s
freezing only at the mouth of its tributary,
translucent necklace of ice.

It may be you are actually as alone as you feel,
that it will only exponentiate.
That this is what scared you so much in the darkness.

(–”Licorice” by Daniel Hales)

(Margot Fonteyn)

I walked into a part of morning
I’ve never seen: the sky still heavy, still
smoldering with the nightmares of others,
the drunkenness and sorrow rising like dew, like fog,
like smoke back into the clouds. Suddenly,
my face was wet with it. I wanted to lie down
with it. To rest against the almost exhausted night.

Uncertain of what to do there
I started dividing the layers, the sediment,
thinking: Usually I sleep through his sadness.

And the morning asking: Why do you keep track
of the middle of the day when you should be
waxing the moon? How can these young fragile branches
be left out in the darkness, and who set that darkness
wandering inside your heart? Who can your love ignite,
like this, like kerosene?

And then the sky lit the morning.
And then I went in to set my own house on fire.
And then I lay down next to you:
a body filling with feathers or with snow
asking: and who are you that my love can light
like this, like kerosene.

(–Olena Kalytiak Davis, “Like Kerosene”)

(“white towels” by richard jones)

“This is the sacred rite for acquiring an assistant. It is acknowledged that he is a god; he is an aerial spirit which you have seen. If you give him a command, straightway he performs the task: he sends dreams, he brings women, men without the use of magical material, he kills, he destroys, he stirs up winds from the earth, he carries / gold, silver, bronze, and he gives them to you whenever the need arises. And he frees from bonds a person chained in prison, he opens doors, he causes invisibility so that no one can see you at all, he is a bringer of fire, he brings water, wine, bread and [whatever] you wish in the way of foods: olive oil, vinegar–with the single exception of fish–”

“Sometimes the last thing you want comes in first
Sometimes the first thing you want never comes
And I know
The waiting is all you can do, sometimes.”

–Aqualung, “Strange and Beautiful” ]]> http://www.annakatherine.com/blog/2011/03/28/sometimes-3/feed/ 0 http://www.annakatherine.com/blog/2011/03/27/i-dont-feel-that-i-need-to-explain-my-art-to-you-warren/ http://www.annakatherine.com/blog/2011/03/27/i-dont-feel-that-i-need-to-explain-my-art-to-you-warren/#comments Sun, 27 Mar 2011 16:04:15 +0000 admin http://www.annakatherine.com/blog/?p=588

PIE

Someone asked me if I was living in Sin.
And I said, Oh yes, I moved there years ago.

I see my body as an instrument, rather than an ornament.
(–Alanis Morissette)