The Orinoco overflows from a goblet,
spouts from the center as though
water had wings. I'm telling you,
this goblet rests on a table
...
- for Rosalind
Because I was a cave,
and you were the bird that flew through
...
Watching your mouth as you eat I think
perhaps an apple is the universe and your body
is an orchard full of trees. I've seen the way your leaves
cling to the ground in fall, and I noted then
...
—inspired by the Remedios Varo painting To Be Reborn
To be reborn,
...
The language of your thighs-
decapitated matches
still burning, decapitated verbs
spun loose, your body a woodshed
...
Melissa Studdard is the author of the bestselling novel Six Weeks to Yehidah (winner of the Forward National Literature Award) and My Yehidah. Her poetry, fiction, essays, reviews, and articles have appeared in dozens of journals and anthologies, including Boulevard, Connecticut Review, Pleiades, Gradiva, American Book Review, Poets and Writers, and The Smoking Poet. She serves as a reviewer-at-large for The National Poetry Review and a contributing editor for Tiferet Journal. As well, she is the host of Tiferet’s radio interview program, Tiferet Talk, which interviews writers and spiritual and religious leaders. Studdard received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and is a professor at a community college in Texas and a teaching artist at The Rooster Moans Poetry Cooperative.)
Sudden Encounters
The Orinoco overflows from a goblet,
spouts from the center as though
water had wings. I'm telling you,
this goblet rests on a table
in the hollow of a tree—so
deliberate that you can't help
but question if the almighty
watchmaker set it there himself.
Paley would have had his say,
to be sure, but this is about Varo
and her own fantastical teleology,
about how the source is never
what you would expect, how
inspiration swims like pink dolphins
through the rivers of night, daring
you to look into its eyes, challenging
you to brave a lifetime of nightmares
for the purchase of a moment of genius,
to be like the woman manning a vessel
no one else has ever seen, like Varo
herself—swimming on the river
with wings, her retinas burnt and open
by frequent, sudden encounters
with dark and unholy gods.
very great poet and writer, have a great works,