Syzygy (and other poems)By Malorie Seeley-Sherwood
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Syzygy
(an [ironic] attempt at heteroglossia)
dusk’s soft descent silhouettes
all in the foreground--
the remaining light
plays with shadow becoming
awash in what it’s not.
[it’s getting beautifully dark.]
loquacity’s absence announces
a rough presence--
self-conscious and repressed
but sybaritic for the masochist
within us.
[what is it that . . .?—thoughts become.
each day: renewed, despite . . .]
the magnitude of reality
tips the precariously-balanced scales
as truth’s weight draws down consciousness
and the diaphanous rest momentously
redintegrates the self--
now vacant of what it fears can’t be.
[the pretention compels and obfuscates.]
and it isn’t,
but the overwhelming wholeness
of proximity heals something
formerly unannounced—silent in its presence;
and this, deafening in its absence--
yet still scattering slight wounds,
deep enough to see within.
[light, too, floods—but what has been sown in the shadows?
the question resounds in a peripatetic mind.
how can it be
said
any other way?]
(an [ironic] attempt at heteroglossia)
dusk’s soft descent silhouettes
all in the foreground--
the remaining light
plays with shadow becoming
awash in what it’s not.
[it’s getting beautifully dark.]
loquacity’s absence announces
a rough presence--
self-conscious and repressed
but sybaritic for the masochist
within us.
[what is it that . . .?—thoughts become.
each day: renewed, despite . . .]
the magnitude of reality
tips the precariously-balanced scales
as truth’s weight draws down consciousness
and the diaphanous rest momentously
redintegrates the self--
now vacant of what it fears can’t be.
[the pretention compels and obfuscates.]
and it isn’t,
but the overwhelming wholeness
of proximity heals something
formerly unannounced—silent in its presence;
and this, deafening in its absence--
yet still scattering slight wounds,
deep enough to see within.
[light, too, floods—but what has been sown in the shadows?
the question resounds in a peripatetic mind.
how can it be
said
any other way?]
Chimera: A Play on Polysemy
“Sometimes I find I had forgot what I was about, or when I began to forget it, I cannot tell. A memory of yesterday’s pleasures, a fear of tomorrow's dangers, a straw under my knee, a noise in mine ear, a light in mine eye, an anything, a nothing, a fancy, a Chimera in my brain, troubles me in my prayer. So certainly is there nothing, nothing in spiritual things, perfect in this world.” – John Donne
Incongruity is to abstain is to reprieve is to relief is to breathe is to
proceed on the edge of the cliff is to prepare (always prepared) is to
hear is to dissect is to analyze is to synthesize is to create is to
belief is to truth is to absolute is to
we
burn ourselves each day
on the smokescreens
of sphinxlike sacrifice.
the fall never far from mind.
nothing, of course,
can come from nothing--
lest your fortunes be marred.
What shall Cordelia speak? too much
and not enough.
to proceed: to deny--
either chimera or self;
the conflagration
of the conscious crepuscular creation
coruscates—not a prayer,
but an offering,
though certainly there is nothing,
nothing in spiritual things,
perfect in this world.
“Sometimes I find I had forgot what I was about, or when I began to forget it, I cannot tell. A memory of yesterday’s pleasures, a fear of tomorrow's dangers, a straw under my knee, a noise in mine ear, a light in mine eye, an anything, a nothing, a fancy, a Chimera in my brain, troubles me in my prayer. So certainly is there nothing, nothing in spiritual things, perfect in this world.” – John Donne
Incongruity is to abstain is to reprieve is to relief is to breathe is to
proceed on the edge of the cliff is to prepare (always prepared) is to
hear is to dissect is to analyze is to synthesize is to create is to
belief is to truth is to absolute is to
we
burn ourselves each day
on the smokescreens
of sphinxlike sacrifice.
the fall never far from mind.
nothing, of course,
can come from nothing--
lest your fortunes be marred.
What shall Cordelia speak? too much
and not enough.
to proceed: to deny--
either chimera or self;
the conflagration
of the conscious crepuscular creation
coruscates—not a prayer,
but an offering,
though certainly there is nothing,
nothing in spiritual things,
perfect in this world.
Kill Your Dichotomies: to Hecate
Your forms elude me,
as (i assume) you wished it would be.
(But the questions gather in the thresholds
where you would be:
Did you plead
for the delicate balance
of your ways—summon
some spirit who’d
seen it all before
and know you’d need
a more measured approach?
Did you conjure your fearlessness
or form it
from experience?
[which, I suppose, is its own
sort of conjuring.]
Do you pace
the turning points,
enamoring those who surrender
as a means to enarmor?
And when they search for you
[certainly, later], do they feel
deceived or whole?
And are they left breathless
after
your triumvirate?
Does your key fit any door,
as your torches light the way,
or do the growling hounds
incise at the inception--
and you, newly formed, enter?
Can you cross another boundary—)
protect us from ourselves?
so many women wait
behind stained-glass window panes
their faces framed
in wooden cross hairs
thinking only
of each other’s gazes.
++
[but i sense that
when i stop staring
at the margins,
waiting,
those distant and alluring spaces
will fill
with a slow gasp
of amorphous flashes
holding some secret
for navigating
the darkness.]
++
Your forms elude me,
as (i assume) you wished it would be.
(But the questions gather in the thresholds
where you would be:
Did you plead
for the delicate balance
of your ways—summon
some spirit who’d
seen it all before
and know you’d need
a more measured approach?
Did you conjure your fearlessness
or form it
from experience?
[which, I suppose, is its own
sort of conjuring.]
Do you pace
the turning points,
enamoring those who surrender
as a means to enarmor?
And when they search for you
[certainly, later], do they feel
deceived or whole?
And are they left breathless
after
your triumvirate?
Does your key fit any door,
as your torches light the way,
or do the growling hounds
incise at the inception--
and you, newly formed, enter?
Can you cross another boundary—)
protect us from ourselves?
so many women wait
behind stained-glass window panes
their faces framed
in wooden cross hairs
thinking only
of each other’s gazes.
++
[but i sense that
when i stop staring
at the margins,
waiting,
those distant and alluring spaces
will fill
with a slow gasp
of amorphous flashes
holding some secret
for navigating
the darkness.]
++
Malorie Seeley-Sherwood holds an MA in English from the State University of New York at New Paltz and teaches writing at the middle, high school, and college levels. Her work has appeared in Shawangunk Review and Entropy, and she is currently working on a chapbook titled Women at Windows. You can find her online @malorie_ss.
