Lux Aurumque
The light we made
between each other
gravity shone
through fifty teen
singers our choir
reeding pure
the grace note’s
call the dissonance
between us wrapped
our vocal folds our
shimmering
each word a gold slip
in pitches
refracted
threaded triads
lips shaped by each
other’s echo’s kiss
octaves in
staircases warm
heavy falling
listen a molten song
undulating in the night
would come for her
in wreck in dissonance
My mouth flew
open no ocean’s
mussel shell
I heard no sound of mine
but in the choral
form we held each time
we sang that glowing
inverted light we recast
her shape in sound
__________________________
The Cloud of Unknowing, Chapter 50: What pure love is; and how for some people such sensory pleasures occur only seldom, and for others often.
Wreath
Honey locust barb
magenta thorn
blood root piping
unbearing you
the twisted band
in grief smoke
your wound a grey
marginal fern
If your mother
a cardinal flower
should divide you
alternate leaf &
aureate stemming
sting the brain
voice & silence
bright circle brow
red edged flush
lead reedy limb
round suture suckle
mechanically train
your hooks into
you twining twin
liana roped helix
as you outgrow
the banded throat
& cicatrix succor
_________________________
The Cloud of Unknowing, Chapter 29: A person should labour perseveringly in this work, and endure the pain it causes, and judge no one.
Downshift
with a line from G.C. Waldrep
6.
foglit in the electric
laurel tracelimning pedal he
forefoots
thousandleafs
ravine sheens & glint we
tonguerace handflint
5.
in yarrow hollows him grumbling
rolls through the thorough
fares: our faces whitelit
purr / round the lake
4.
oiltarred tracked pliant he
tresses compliant star it
runs bent declining
dense engine widelip mar
3.
hindfoot dell we woo’d
he’ll trail a lily twayblade
exhausts to goneseed
2.
lopseeding speeding horsepins
1.
intrusion
bygone & blaze
__________________________
The Cloud of Unknowing, Chapter 40: While performing this work, a soul has no special regard to any individual vice or virtue.
ALICIA WRIGHT is originally from Rome, Georgia. The recipient of fellowships from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, her poems appear or are forthcoming in Ecotone, Indiana Review, The Greensboro Review, Flag + Void, and Poetry Northwest, among others. At present, Alicia is a doctoral candidate in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Denver.