The Flesh of Death Is the Fabric of Life
poetry in response to the art installations of Tamara Kostianovsky
By Lucie Chou
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The Flesh of Death Is the Fabric of Life
1
When a carcass split open flowers;
When its ribcage becomes a nest
birds of paradise can fly to and from
at full liberty;
When arteries are arbors, the aorta the central pillar;
When veins are vines blooming fireworks and starbursts;
When what seems to be such is really no carnage
but bones & veins bound as wounds are bandaged ,
flesh fastened as ropes are fashioned from bedsheets
and bathtowels to make a lifeline for
escaping a burning building;
When an Argentinian artist too poor to buy paints
during the great treachery of national economy
stands facing her open wardrobe
of brilliant surrogate skins
thinking, I am a woman, and these
are my materials, my Mater;
When her father cuts open bodies
at 2 am to tear out weedy roots,
rearrange tulip bulbs, redirect shoots,
replace gangrenous turfs;
When her home opens its front door
on an abattoir for all her childhood;
When she strips her ownmost self naked;
your head is gently bumped by a lion’s share of meat
fabricated from flax, cotton, and contagion with petals.
You thought the bandana keeping your hair out of rain
had nothing to do with the red rivulets
weaving a fluvial web near the butcher shop
and the vivid blot on tissue paper
struck by your carver has nothing to do
with the pink venation of philodendron
and a faded blouse the color
of overblown poppies
with Venetian glass
but now a taut ardor urges you
to embrace the paradise
of cadavers, dance, be one flesh
and cry, “Eureka!”
Is the residually sweet fabric
softener making pain
not beatific, but irrelevant or (even
better, let us be true to one another) innocent
as in a Godless Eden?
This is the great lie we live.
It is.
It is what it is not. It is not what it is.
It is truer than life.
2
Have you heard about the rainbow eucalyptus?
No, not the spaghetti orchard or outdoor art
but nature’s ownmost skin, flesh of her flesh
which she wears nothing over but bark
sensitive to sun, rain, taste of the earth
and time. No, in some of the photos the colors
are oversaturated for sure, but it’s true that
the most freshly peeled shines bright sap green
(naked cambium) which then weathers to
delft blue, sweet potato purple, lemon, orange,
chestnut brown. In a certain slant of light
auburn may radiate an aura of rose.
She strips herself to make myriad stripes of life
to tease no one, except perhaps her own innate
sense of beauty. Which, sure enough, is skin-deep,
paper-thin. When the slabs of fiber are pulped,
dried on and lifted from frames in sheets,
they are monochrome and slightly translucent
as old brittle skin over the temples of mummies,
as millennial vellum, or just plain paper this
will most likely be printed on. When the trees
are down, the stumps will tell the history of a life
in monotone. What is the supreme summa
of the universe, in terms of hue? What is the sum
of a life? Clothes now outliving their wearer, her
father, make these felled trees, rampikes, split logs
feeding fungi that will astound all dressing cases.
She sews in some strands of black to remind
you of the burning and burnt moments
indwelling with every life’s iridescence.
Yes, not one luster, but many. Not just
of starlight, but cloth reeking of this body
and this body only, the life it built
up layer by layer sticking together through
thick and thin, by the storm
of death torn down.
In this world fire seasons are always becoming
so much longer, intenser, more ubiquitous
that even eucalyptus whose nature it is to burn
in a few firestormed generations shall most likely
knit and stitch it into its nature to mourn.
3
My first egret was in the park
across the street when winter
jasmine bloomed. It perched
on crags specially quarried
to make decorative cliffs.
It perched in mud largely
innocent of worms. Still it
stabbed and stabbed and stabbed.
An s squirmed through its S
with grotesque grace.
It opened like a white sail
freed of its fregata
and made its own wind
to glide on, and made more
wind, carrying its weather
till the sky carried it back
all to its self, as the cloud.
For an exegesis of ecology
see Carcass with Egret,
how the bird that lets
cattle carry it on back
and eats insects evicted
by grass-thundering hooves
(shooing gadflies and cleaning
skin crannies in return)
would also choose to stand
on a cushiony, dangling side
of butchered meat, a tree
stump, a tapestry of exotic
flowers and fantastic birds
and call: for this is home,
where I rest I call my own
environment, my trusty roost.
The sky above Corkscrew
Swamp Sanctuary is blue
as Giotto’s angels saw it,
the gown making the flesh
and feathers of the egret
white as the sum of light.
4
There is an affinity between trees and bodies held
in the language of limbs.
Flesh of the world:
One day Orlando would
slough his crimson breeches, lace collar,
waistcoat of taffeta, and shoes with rosettes on them
as big as double dahlias and her sprigged cotton
and wine-colored brocade and the fabrics
write their own biography.
And like “The Oak Tree”, the manuscript
of a long, long life, with holes and folds in it,
grains in the heartwood broken then healed,
strands no less convoluted than all beams
seen and unseen of the cosmos, it is all one
flesh, like Orlando, one great growing soul.
1
When a carcass split open flowers;
When its ribcage becomes a nest
birds of paradise can fly to and from
at full liberty;
When arteries are arbors, the aorta the central pillar;
When veins are vines blooming fireworks and starbursts;
When what seems to be such is really no carnage
but bones & veins bound as wounds are bandaged ,
flesh fastened as ropes are fashioned from bedsheets
and bathtowels to make a lifeline for
escaping a burning building;
When an Argentinian artist too poor to buy paints
during the great treachery of national economy
stands facing her open wardrobe
of brilliant surrogate skins
thinking, I am a woman, and these
are my materials, my Mater;
When her father cuts open bodies
at 2 am to tear out weedy roots,
rearrange tulip bulbs, redirect shoots,
replace gangrenous turfs;
When her home opens its front door
on an abattoir for all her childhood;
When she strips her ownmost self naked;
your head is gently bumped by a lion’s share of meat
fabricated from flax, cotton, and contagion with petals.
You thought the bandana keeping your hair out of rain
had nothing to do with the red rivulets
weaving a fluvial web near the butcher shop
and the vivid blot on tissue paper
struck by your carver has nothing to do
with the pink venation of philodendron
and a faded blouse the color
of overblown poppies
with Venetian glass
but now a taut ardor urges you
to embrace the paradise
of cadavers, dance, be one flesh
and cry, “Eureka!”
Is the residually sweet fabric
softener making pain
not beatific, but irrelevant or (even
better, let us be true to one another) innocent
as in a Godless Eden?
This is the great lie we live.
It is.
It is what it is not. It is not what it is.
It is truer than life.
2
Have you heard about the rainbow eucalyptus?
No, not the spaghetti orchard or outdoor art
but nature’s ownmost skin, flesh of her flesh
which she wears nothing over but bark
sensitive to sun, rain, taste of the earth
and time. No, in some of the photos the colors
are oversaturated for sure, but it’s true that
the most freshly peeled shines bright sap green
(naked cambium) which then weathers to
delft blue, sweet potato purple, lemon, orange,
chestnut brown. In a certain slant of light
auburn may radiate an aura of rose.
She strips herself to make myriad stripes of life
to tease no one, except perhaps her own innate
sense of beauty. Which, sure enough, is skin-deep,
paper-thin. When the slabs of fiber are pulped,
dried on and lifted from frames in sheets,
they are monochrome and slightly translucent
as old brittle skin over the temples of mummies,
as millennial vellum, or just plain paper this
will most likely be printed on. When the trees
are down, the stumps will tell the history of a life
in monotone. What is the supreme summa
of the universe, in terms of hue? What is the sum
of a life? Clothes now outliving their wearer, her
father, make these felled trees, rampikes, split logs
feeding fungi that will astound all dressing cases.
She sews in some strands of black to remind
you of the burning and burnt moments
indwelling with every life’s iridescence.
Yes, not one luster, but many. Not just
of starlight, but cloth reeking of this body
and this body only, the life it built
up layer by layer sticking together through
thick and thin, by the storm
of death torn down.
In this world fire seasons are always becoming
so much longer, intenser, more ubiquitous
that even eucalyptus whose nature it is to burn
in a few firestormed generations shall most likely
knit and stitch it into its nature to mourn.
3
My first egret was in the park
across the street when winter
jasmine bloomed. It perched
on crags specially quarried
to make decorative cliffs.
It perched in mud largely
innocent of worms. Still it
stabbed and stabbed and stabbed.
An s squirmed through its S
with grotesque grace.
It opened like a white sail
freed of its fregata
and made its own wind
to glide on, and made more
wind, carrying its weather
till the sky carried it back
all to its self, as the cloud.
For an exegesis of ecology
see Carcass with Egret,
how the bird that lets
cattle carry it on back
and eats insects evicted
by grass-thundering hooves
(shooing gadflies and cleaning
skin crannies in return)
would also choose to stand
on a cushiony, dangling side
of butchered meat, a tree
stump, a tapestry of exotic
flowers and fantastic birds
and call: for this is home,
where I rest I call my own
environment, my trusty roost.
The sky above Corkscrew
Swamp Sanctuary is blue
as Giotto’s angels saw it,
the gown making the flesh
and feathers of the egret
white as the sum of light.
4
There is an affinity between trees and bodies held
in the language of limbs.
Flesh of the world:
One day Orlando would
slough his crimson breeches, lace collar,
waistcoat of taffeta, and shoes with rosettes on them
as big as double dahlias and her sprigged cotton
and wine-colored brocade and the fabrics
write their own biography.
And like “The Oak Tree”, the manuscript
of a long, long life, with holes and folds in it,
grains in the heartwood broken then healed,
strands no less convoluted than all beams
seen and unseen of the cosmos, it is all one
flesh, like Orlando, one great growing soul.
The Vegetarian* Looks into Mesmerizing Meat
I walk into a fauvist forest with the place of trees
taken by carcasses.
Cut cows turned into tropical landscapes
by replacing heart, lungs, gut, meat, nerves, veins
with lianas of baby blue, lemon and mint green twining
trellises of skeletons, perched upon by birds.
Gaudy, lifelike, perfectly blissful birds
that might as well be warbling from the trees
of their lungs. This intertwining
or alchemy of carcasses
and vegetal veins,
of death’s internal landscapes
and the instress and inscape
of a garden with birds
of paradise shocks me into a dream where my opened veins
flower allamanda on gallows trees.
The botanical garden’s guide map says these carcasses
are made by cutting, sewing, layering, twining
salvaged clothes around blocks of wood. By twining
the outside and inside of the landscapes
printed on the skin of carcasses
(cotton print, branding, feathers of birds)
the magician mesmerizes trees
in my brain into thinking veins
that channeled blood of the cows and vines
of passionfruit really twine
like man and woman making love. Trees
have no place in fleshy and bloody landscapes
I thought, and the only birds
likely to perch on the outside or inside of carcasses
are vultures. But on these rococo carcasses
herons and bowerbirds stand like weathervanes
to my mind’s unknowable weather. Birds
in a museum are omens spelling fate intertwined
for meat maimed and weight gained. No escape
from the dripping, matted limbs of the world-tree.
Remember the beautiful bird carcasses in Dutch still lives?
Do worshippers wrap sacred cloth around trees in vain?
How many yards of twine to hold landscapes from unraveling?
*Kim Yeong-hye, the protagonist of The Vegetarian by Han Kang
I walk into a fauvist forest with the place of trees
taken by carcasses.
Cut cows turned into tropical landscapes
by replacing heart, lungs, gut, meat, nerves, veins
with lianas of baby blue, lemon and mint green twining
trellises of skeletons, perched upon by birds.
Gaudy, lifelike, perfectly blissful birds
that might as well be warbling from the trees
of their lungs. This intertwining
or alchemy of carcasses
and vegetal veins,
of death’s internal landscapes
and the instress and inscape
of a garden with birds
of paradise shocks me into a dream where my opened veins
flower allamanda on gallows trees.
The botanical garden’s guide map says these carcasses
are made by cutting, sewing, layering, twining
salvaged clothes around blocks of wood. By twining
the outside and inside of the landscapes
printed on the skin of carcasses
(cotton print, branding, feathers of birds)
the magician mesmerizes trees
in my brain into thinking veins
that channeled blood of the cows and vines
of passionfruit really twine
like man and woman making love. Trees
have no place in fleshy and bloody landscapes
I thought, and the only birds
likely to perch on the outside or inside of carcasses
are vultures. But on these rococo carcasses
herons and bowerbirds stand like weathervanes
to my mind’s unknowable weather. Birds
in a museum are omens spelling fate intertwined
for meat maimed and weight gained. No escape
from the dripping, matted limbs of the world-tree.
Remember the beautiful bird carcasses in Dutch still lives?
Do worshippers wrap sacred cloth around trees in vain?
How many yards of twine to hold landscapes from unraveling?
*Kim Yeong-hye, the protagonist of The Vegetarian by Han Kang
Gothic of Discarded Clothes with Moss and Meat Hooks
I keep dreaming the woods with ripped limbs dripping.
Horror doesn’t keep my hands out of the hot meat.
I walk into the tropical abattoir. It’s perfectly gripping.
Bodies reveal inner gardens landscaped by stitching
strips of lukewarm clothes taken off the radiant heat
of bodies dreaming woods with ripped limbs dripping.
There can be no doubt our elegant nibbling and sipping
enable art’s vision of these. It is beauty of death we eat.
I walk into the tropical abattoir. It’s perfectly gripping.
One flowering cow bumps my head softly as the lipping
of lovers with boughs, orchids, passion vines, parakeets.
The trees’ limbs of fabrics are ripped but not dripping.
Battery-powered hearts can start the birds chirruping.
Plumeria almost smells, guava almost tastes sweet.
Tropical plants in a meat plant! It’s perfectly gripping!
Sculptures and cadavers differ in methods of shipping.
The former go into eyes, the latter through teeth.
In my dream wood bones wear ripped clothes dripping
new life the tropical abattoir is imperfectly gripping.
I keep dreaming the woods with ripped limbs dripping.
Horror doesn’t keep my hands out of the hot meat.
I walk into the tropical abattoir. It’s perfectly gripping.
Bodies reveal inner gardens landscaped by stitching
strips of lukewarm clothes taken off the radiant heat
of bodies dreaming woods with ripped limbs dripping.
There can be no doubt our elegant nibbling and sipping
enable art’s vision of these. It is beauty of death we eat.
I walk into the tropical abattoir. It’s perfectly gripping.
One flowering cow bumps my head softly as the lipping
of lovers with boughs, orchids, passion vines, parakeets.
The trees’ limbs of fabrics are ripped but not dripping.
Battery-powered hearts can start the birds chirruping.
Plumeria almost smells, guava almost tastes sweet.
Tropical plants in a meat plant! It’s perfectly gripping!
Sculptures and cadavers differ in methods of shipping.
The former go into eyes, the latter through teeth.
In my dream wood bones wear ripped clothes dripping
new life the tropical abattoir is imperfectly gripping.
Lucie Chou is an ecopoet from China whose work appears or is forthcoming in Entropy, the Black Earth Institute Blog, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Transom, Tofu Ink Arts, Halfway Down the Stairs, Kelp Journal, Sky Island Journal, Plant-Human Quarterly, Slant: A Journal of Poetry and Poet’s Lore. A debut collection, Convivial Communiverse, came from Atmosphere Press. In August 2023, she participated in the Tupelo Press 30/30 project where she fundraised for the indie press by writing one poem each day for a month.
