[What
follows is the sixth installment of Rochelle Owens’ Hermaphropoetics, a work in progress that continues the poetic
& mythopoetic reach of her oeuvre as it has come to us since the
1960s. For me she remains, as she was
when we first came to know her, a poet who bends the resources of language
toward the revelation & creation of a new & always startling vision of
the real & more-than-real. As I
wrote of her back then: “There is a voice in Owens’ work … like a fierce and unrelenting
force of nature. Sharp and visual, she combines a landscape with a poetics, the
domestic with the mythic, machines with the organic living world from which
arises a construct and a fused vision: poetry and life.” The photo image of the field on Mars that
accompanies “Brown Dust” is a good example of what her work makes possible.
(J.R.)]
The camera zooms and pans
blinking
in and out sunlight/blackness
a
glass of ice water sparkles
sunlight/blackness
The
hermaphrodite
seated
on the stump of a tree
his
teeth overlapping
out
of her mouth protrudes his tongue
Hibiscus goose grass
leaves mango
sunlight/blackness
she
could feel the shape of colors
the
flesh of the apple drinking colors
Blood
of the months of the year
Four
bearded elders linking arms
circling
clockwise
every
day bears the data sweat mucus
tears urine
corkscrews of earwax
A
strange rain vertical/horizontal
layers
of brown dust light heat
see
the subjects
spectacular
the photos
Photos
of a master photographer
focusing
her lens
the
physical poetic eyes seeing
an
asymmetrical form
Blinking
in and out sunlight/blackness
eyes
seeing
the
size of the skeleton the bones
the
shape of the head
Micrographic
photographs
eye
sockets thickness of fat layers
eyes
seeing a slit in the stalk
blood
seeping
The
hermaphrodite emptied of allegory
seated on the stump of a tree
The
hermaphrodite
her/his
body swaying side to side
one
foot sunk in mud a hand dangling
out
of the frame
A
flush of wet hot air burning
her
neck and face
five
musicians chanting drumming
squatting
on their heels
Sinuous
the rhythms beneath the skin
the
nerves spirals of veins
fibrous
tendons
twisting zigzagging
Six
bearded elders linking arms
circling circling clockwise
a
boy warrior with pierced nipples
Her
soaring paper thin shoulderblades
green
and pale the scrotal lily
The
muscles of his onion-shaped calves
spasmodic
in the dust
an
impure creation captured after the siege
carnal/spiritual
Teasing
femme/homme
her
henna-dyed palms his fingers
working
black kohl
the
inner and outer eyelids
Rose
gold the eyes of the hermaphrodite
molecular
the creeping tension
the
flow of hormonal forces
sunlight/blackness
Every
day bears the data
a
master photographer altering
perception the ruinscape disappearing
signs
and wonders
In
the concrete space audio
recordings
fluorescent
bulbs protruding
a
little girl dangling
a vinyl mask
A
little boy wearing harem pants
fickle
he saunters by the taste of her
sweat
seawater his/her body
carnal/spiritual
Wedding
bells Wedding cake
berries
and apricots under the veil
joyful
the bridegroom
lifting
the veil
A
long curved fingernail
tracing
the cleft
pale
and red the folds slashes
of
color seeping
the
flower vulva cut away
Eight
warlords singing
linking
arms circling circling clockwise
bulbous
and blood-packed
their lips
Nine
chanting the legend
waxing
poetic
a
legend of a child falling out of the sky
see
the photos sunlight/blackness
A
white swan shimmering
in
scene after scene a strange rain vertical
/horizontal blinking in and out
piles
of rocks
Fluorescent
bulbs protruding
a
figure trussed and lying down
A
camera flash
a
glass of ice water sparkles
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