Rochelle Owens: From “Solarpoetics” (continued) 12-15
[Writes Owens of her new masterwork: “In the order of the letters of the alphabet I am making use in these poems of a system of mental relations which by the act of writing becomes the poem, a cosmic meditation.”]
Vulnerable Flesh Eater
12
And of the volume of bread
eighty percent is empty space
*
The letter L a right angle
walk down a street
step by step blood pushes
to the surface
On your tongue a metallic taste
Flour and water
yellow sulfurous a plume
of smoke I strolled in wind cold
and heat
Drifting geometries
Between victim and executioner
T H E R U I N S C A P E
the eyes move constantly while
reading body of data
13
Networks of neurons organize themselves
chemical molecular
*
The letter M vibrates in
the earth hums the rhythm
of spontaneous
change
Animal hole spiritual soul
Slapping flying insects
Insects far and near
spiritual hole
animal soul
A secret tribal language
Work is a binding obligation focus
on a common scene a plume
of smoke bread baking
butchery
14
Microbes in a petri dish
a method of colonizing and dispersing
*
The letter N remembers
once upon a time
on the sea bed strange
scars
A black line zigzags
Zones of inclusion exclusion
the reading brain eyes
moving constantly
pinpoint
A selected shape
A circle a hole a fat fold
of the abdomen a breast vein
as thick as a finger
A loaf of bread
15
All the letters are in nature
the forms that our cortex chooses
*
The letter O is a hole
that engulfs consumes gut
head and tail one
animal
The pit of mayhem
Out of the digital age
a set of skills in sequential order
body of data data
the body
Rhythmic the flow of hormonal forces
Edible the heart tongue
and liver sings the poet maudite
salt for the stew salt
for the bread
[Earlier sections of Solarpoetics appear here and here on Poems and Poetics.]
Poems and poetics