Sherry Johnson
Angles
glyphed in softness
to keep the softness from
rotting. Somewhere
between form and pleasure; one
blindly depthsounds
the length of some pliant,
swaying barrier
with the feel of a velvet cordon
snaking a waiting line at the
bank. Cold wink
of a metal hasp curved at the end
of it. Snap
& click & let it
slip. Business
is business as they say. As they
say. And
here
business is oranges. Plated and paint-scaped. Sunk
with such a totality into their
names as to sit
nearly umbrageless, echo-less. As
the pale pink
money of such little-mouthed
flowers, their smudged
work at light-silkening and how they shut up
(so
quiet-like) as a group about it.
And
what of the punch-card cardboard
postcard’s
quadrangle broached counterpoise? Infuses
a
papery sense into leaves, a beige shrug. The painter’s
equivalency
of an area rug. Register a hole-punch
glance
just once — then move on. To black area blocked
behind
fronds and pot / does not impart a sense of itself
to
anything, remains delimited and distant; a knees
-pulled-up-under-the-chin-of-itself
black look.
Memento
mori for the Eurasian oriole he glimpsed
out
of the pleated, flash-shot panes of the east oriel. A screen
/ screen winging
shut and
yellow
of feather admixed with split bone, coiled gut; he
angled
the thing haphazard on a gash / scraped
once
with the trowel and it vanished
as
instantly as intimated. Light stayed liquid and brass.
Memento
mori for 4 ‘o clock tea. For the jubilant, fleet skiing parties.
Memento
mori for the many small lies navigated
in
order to accommodate a social ease.
Memento
mori for the poor and squalid,
and for those who are without locks.
Memento
mori for the oily, fingerprinted scroll of the exhausted
tube
of Mummy Brown, — made from the chocolate-coloured,
ground-up
remains
of 6 separate Egyptians. Bury it with funeral rites in the garden.
Memento
mori for the late light diffracted on the snow-crusted
peaks,
and for the one who looked up, and — in
looking —
plummeted a moment down the mountain with it.
Memento
mori for those who died in the mines — extracting the pigments.
Memento
mori for the question which stood up defiantly
in
the soul, bivouacked a brief time in the ribs, made it
all
the way up into the throat’s pink vaults — then promptly died there.
Memento
mori for the chrome points
flashing
between bearings, the lace collars and volatile smell of wood polish.
Memento
mori for the tabby found drowned in the cistern. The soft,
limp leadenness of it. Its glassy green gaze.
Memento
mori for the yellowed ledger
from
the last century, with its 5 water-stained, empty pages.
Memento
mori for the frame. And for the casual, flaccid
brushwork
accentuating cloth’s tooth. This second hand
feeling hung on the hook
of
an August day when absolutely nothing (everything) was immanent.
Sherry Johnson
is the author of two books of poetry, Pale Grace and Hymns to
Phenomena. Her poems have appeared in many journals, magazines and
anthologies, most recently in The Malahat Review and forthcoming in CV2
and The Iowa Review. Also a film critic, her articles have appeared in Senses
of Cinema, MUBI Notebook, the Swedish academic journal Film
International and others.
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