From “A CHILD IS BORN IN THE MIDST OF A RAVENING CENTURY”
they thought we were marked by a territory within
stasis they thought
of loss
crossing one line and then another de-
ranged they thought of the limit
whose semblance or gutter
purged and not to remember
the way a blank field turns or
brackets enfold silence,
dear listener,
in the grasses, dear static,
we long for marrow
bitten flesh
hallucinatory juices
flowing through the hours
aleatory quaking
the riverbed sank into shape
slouched into the curve
of a shadow
to nestle there in recollection
of wind that is not wind
but fragrant burial
giving way to the image
of a garden unhinged of a garden
clashing out of breath and
curdling at the sound
of metal
in this territory (the territory
torn from image
there were many things
we could not contain
for instance I built a shelter
from a nest buried deep in the chest-
like cavity of a tree
but the nest didn’t remain and I
grew tired of trying to make it
enough so I took a letter knife
to etch the days of omicrons
spreading over the landscape
glyphs suggestive of an absence
the witnesses carved rust into
they said we could fall into
anachronism the clashing of metal
far away from the prairie
as middlescape of bruised fruit
falling but I too felt some funnel
of time wherein I could not (like a gyroscope
configure my own arrangements
spinning off one axis and the next
whose physics were unclear and subtly
awry they call this illness
in another dimension they call this necro-
kinesis and blood-loving my fruit
was unlike others
adhering to form, they named this
“body without organs”
and let the animal skeletons dry
in a line in a breeze
now trailing the Mississippi
where streams entangle the roots
growing heavy with time and dis-
tending the vows you take
to the land the vows you take
to soil take root in the mind
of the landscape whose vastness
infers painting or slashing of forms
the double-threaded spiral the double-
headed cadaver dog the twice
promised and forever (the lice
grew teeth on this day
that the river
gave I a way of making
sense through thickets of grasses
brushing up against the ancient mind
at the base of the skull where the dark
tunnels lead only back to water
I canted
I can’t call
but for the scar that grasps the tree
the dissolving earth
a body on which even the rats flee
following ley lines through a pasture
shaded on one side by rain,
on the other, steam,
and between them a ruse
that could make you believe
again in destiny
in Iowa a sheep prepares
to be shorn of its warmth
a syllable catches the sleeve
of a man with clippers who sleeps
and tells us that the dream is ravenous and if we stay here
we too might fall sideways into the piling heaps that keep piling for the meanwhile unending
Notes
In the fifth poem, the line “painting or slashing of forms” derives from Sandra Doller’s Oriflamme where she writes the line “painting slashing or of forms.”
Julia Madsen is a multimedia poet and educator. She received an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University and is currently a PhD candidate in English/Creative Writing at the University of Denver. Her poems, multimedia work, and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in jubilat, Tarpaulin Sky, Black Warrior Review, Versal, Caketrain, Michigan Quarterly Review, Alice Blue Review, CutBank, La Vague Journal, Flag+Void, Word For/Word, Entropy, Fanzine, Full Stop, Tagvverk, Dream Pop Press,and elsewhere. Her first book, The Boneyard, The Birth Manual, A Burial: Investigations into the Heartland, is forthcoming from Trembling Pillow Press.