Layers

This entry is part 74 of 92 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Spring 2011

Sulfur and sweetness, relish and bite:
you know it’s that good when you cry
from pleasure. Light a single votive

as you chop and mince: it helps to muffle
tears. The husk is a paper tunic, a skin
to wear like another language—

like the woman in Oregon who woke
from dental surgery surprised,
speaking with a foreign accent.

It means the house for what we think
we know is made of swirly layers—
see all those rings that fall away

on the cutting block when you
slice crosswise through? I like to think
that everything we’ve touched,

touches back; and vice versa.
See how a bug has left a red
swelling between my knuckles—

I’ll put some salve on it
until it subsides; then finger this
new site of rescue absently for days.

About

Via Negativa is a unique experiment in daily, poetic conversation with the living and the dead. Dave Bonta founded the site in 2003 and Luisa A. Igloria joined in 2010. Guest authors contribute as well. Dave writes daily erasure poems to discover the poetry hidden in the Diary of Samuel Pepys. Luisa has been writing and posting a poem a day since November 2010, often in response to Dave’s entries at The Morning Porch. Collections of poems first published at Via Negativa include Luisa’s The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Mid-Life Crisis and Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser, and Dave’s Ice Mountain and Breakdown: Banjo Poems. Read more…

Dale Favier says:

June 2, 2011 at 1:34 pm

Oh, my. Wonderful wonderful wonderful.

Albert B. Casuga says:

June 2, 2011 at 4:20 pm

I like to think/ that everything we’ve touched,/ touches back; and vice versa…

WITH THIS TOUCH, I KNOW

We go in and out of the chambers of grace
and afflictions in the heart of things at our
own peril. These are houses we scarcely know

but before long we think we have known,
and cried at every mention of how things were
in those days in those houses where we grew.

We have known them all: the familiar songs,
the loves gone by, the pains forgiven, the hurts
that linger, and all that has touched us we now

want to touch, maybe not with caressing hands
but certainly with steady and soulful embraces
that know how to let go when things must go.

We have known them all already, we have touched
them all. With each touch we have learned to pray.

—Albert B. Casuga
06-02-11

2 Replies to “Layers”