Brenda Coultas
from The Tatters
Animations
Coloring the glass with pee or peering at a blue dense enough to be alive or
to influence a human or inhuman action, the feather death crown is a spiral,
and in automatic writing, the spirals grow smaller and smaller before any
actual communication.
Spiral, a tornado wind in the pen and on the page
Pressed glass hen on nest
girls in frosted petticoats
white darning eggs
clear radio tubes
cobalt eyewash cup talks of sand and heat
speaks of tinctures and rubs soothing as a salve or as beauty
the sand grains talk of rock and water
The feather crowns say, “There must be a better way to signify heaven or
salvation.” Those who gather crowns, keep them under glass or in their best
candy boxes and pass them on as evidence of afterlife.
This one gathers the living. The feathers having chosen a spokes-one.
Earth shaken, pressed glass pink in permanent petticoats. Arms pinned.
Returning items to the sea and beads to the wire. Pushing horseshoe crabs
back into time in hopes of reanimation.
Meteorite in a field of pussy willows
Rose crystal skull abandoned on a city sidewalk
Bottles swim into the sea, gather mass, and offer a lift, a flotilla/
for drifting hitchhikers. A spoon lifts cereal from the cranial bowl of
a medical school skull.
A fossil is a fiction written by time.
Elephants bearing salt and pepper, trunks tied to the pony’s back.
Unyielding, brittle, and easy to snap, the bridled pony, bribed or beaten to
walk at night, over canyons and valleys of green sleep, laden with packages,
tied tightly with red string, yet some fall and shatteras if they’d arrived by
post. Biscuit boxes and camping stoves are small, but heavy like stone
houses.
Moving through woods, towards the big deep fragment of an enameled
bucket. Depression pink tongue tip, thick and scalloped, radiates from the
car in the woods. Hubcap pain-spokes outward from the center.
While sleeping in the woods, a matchbox cemetery turns to stone over time.
Shards of mirror given as a gift. Busty angel holds a dove aloft in her hands.
Oyster shell middens replace teeth as eternal as the ball of a titanium hip.
What remains is a pewter vessel, hard and grey, that serves better as a pencil
cup than as a grog glass.
[This poem appeared earlier in White Wall Review #38, and is reprinted by permission of the author.]
from The Tatters
Animations
Coloring the glass with pee or peering at a blue dense enough to be alive or
to influence a human or inhuman action, the feather death crown is a spiral,
and in automatic writing, the spirals grow smaller and smaller before any
actual communication.
Spiral, a tornado wind in the pen and on the page
Pressed glass hen on nest
girls in frosted petticoats
white darning eggs
clear radio tubes
cobalt eyewash cup talks of sand and heat
speaks of tinctures and rubs soothing as a salve or as beauty
the sand grains talk of rock and water
The feather crowns say, “There must be a better way to signify heaven or
salvation.” Those who gather crowns, keep them under glass or in their best
candy boxes and pass them on as evidence of afterlife.
This one gathers the living. The feathers having chosen a spokes-one.
Earth shaken, pressed glass pink in permanent petticoats. Arms pinned.
Returning items to the sea and beads to the wire. Pushing horseshoe crabs
back into time in hopes of reanimation.
Meteorite in a field of pussy willows
Rose crystal skull abandoned on a city sidewalk
Bottles swim into the sea, gather mass, and offer a lift, a flotilla/
for drifting hitchhikers. A spoon lifts cereal from the cranial bowl of
a medical school skull.
A fossil is a fiction written by time.
Elephants bearing salt and pepper, trunks tied to the pony’s back.
Unyielding, brittle, and easy to snap, the bridled pony, bribed or beaten to
walk at night, over canyons and valleys of green sleep, laden with packages,
tied tightly with red string, yet some fall and shatteras if they’d arrived by
post. Biscuit boxes and camping stoves are small, but heavy like stone
houses.
Moving through woods, towards the big deep fragment of an enameled
bucket. Depression pink tongue tip, thick and scalloped, radiates from the
car in the woods. Hubcap pain-spokes outward from the center.
While sleeping in the woods, a matchbox cemetery turns to stone over time.
Shards of mirror given as a gift. Busty angel holds a dove aloft in her hands.
Oyster shell middens replace teeth as eternal as the ball of a titanium hip.
What remains is a pewter vessel, hard and grey, that serves better as a pencil
cup than as a grog glass.
[This poem appeared earlier in White Wall Review #38, and is reprinted by permission of the author.]