Rebecca Stoddard

omoma, yellow sow

a mare in evolution is tempted to distinction
like the friction of degrees or an orange rhombus slab shaped

to abstraction and chaffed red along the edges
until what shows is aged rawhide on display

like a crinkled sign in a storefront:
"now whose body is really their own?"

and whose body is a painted muscle hanging from
the meat hook while the artist as taxidermist

discovers the cell as outcast or breathing as an
arrival? Stroke it to find linkage

and who will arrive is a shifty bum learned in how
to yoke curves into bleeding pendulums

like quartered wildlife mounted as sellable parts
not beautified even by her beholder.

now arrive at enchantment through reminiscence,
and this time what is cast but a woman in blue silhouette

not a man contemplating his own reflection,
not a snakeskin missing its innards,

not a tree in repose, afraid of his twin:         (the wood flooring)
but that same curved figure standing

with crooked hips begging
seven saints to offer what they haven't got:

Feather eye to feather be, a child's game,
the haunting laugh clap of looping reels

but who told Immediacy to be the unknown lover of the Traditionalist?
who found him breasted: ink blot to ink blot

a collage of tonal sequence: (he said, no paradises)
Flightkeeper take stock, which miles did you record

when Spontaneity unrequited the Permanist?
It's true, I only wanted to be touched

but the yellow sow is a slippery lover! who gave wing to
an unreachable Invisiblist who laid down with Hedona

every time Panic loved him too well

Rebecca Stoddard currently lives in San Francisco where she curates the GearySt. Reading Series. The poem printed here will appear in the upcoming chapbook home? on Noemi Press in 2004. Her chapbook collaboration with photographer Blair Elliot and sound artist Alan Pavlica, Thirty Sentences, will appear on Siren Electric Press in 2004.

<<