SurVision Magazine

Daggers Glimmer and Shine like Fish


Fig trees, falling stars, the sighing of the sea
Engaged you in your cradle through an open window.
Deep red the roses, deep red the Virgin's happy tears
Entering the parchment walls of your nursery –
Rumored to be the site of sprite springs
    under the dry ground of the vega;
I know it's true, though I wasn't there to offer frankincense & myrrh; I was
Cantos of clouds away, across the craters
Of the moon, on a sleeping horse whose wings
    were incubating.

Green, I hoped they'd be, like yours, your olive groves,
    your green guitar –
Andalusia's most perfectly pitched instrument –
Raising the volume of the blood in the sand,
Carrying saint songs to the stalactite heights of the cathedrals.
In widowed doorways, in the shadows    of the Civil Guard,
Arrows you sent to pierce solitude, sorrow, wind and death –

Lizard-like, persistent, dark as midnight in the English woods
    behind the Court of the Lions,
On lonely gypsy mountains, bowed over the balconies
    of Granada,
Resplendent death, like a fever in your eyes –
Clear, surprised, full of phantoms & the mysteries of love.
Angel of Fuentevaqueros, pray for us now –
    we who've staked everything on your smile and your wave.    





Night Work


Making time of the time before it's time      my wanderer

Builds a boat      of all my parts     in flesh     he draws
the parchment charts of heavenworld     fumbling bones
to masthead     in darkness     his hands to feel     rigging muscles    
stretched from aft to bow     knots of heartstrings     sinew nets
for casting frightened stars & birds     tarred  from black wet bottles
of bobbing soul milk     thick veins of floodgate arms

Making time of the time before it's time      my wander

Weaves a blood sail     of solar plexus     & fur from an overweight
succubus     feeding on dreams     of golden  heirloom jewelry    
Indian givers      pool sharks     killers     & the she guardian healing cuts    

Forever green     my wanderer will go when my consonants and a-e-i-o-u's
hit the floor    when  my tongue is nodding      he'll leap into a bath    
of inarticulate sounds      chanting  the lullaby that calms the  archipelagos

Above
above
above




Caravan


My dreams are like intrepid banners – brave, adventurous – flying over barbaric lands, beautiful cities, vales of palm and azure silence. My dreams departed like a caravan with laden camels, spears and songs, to seek the horizons of immense kingdoms – kingdoms of opulent cities, cinnamon and myrrh, lying traffic in the sand realms of romance.  Long ago, with the tumult of bugles, I set forth for the perilous unknown of a vaguely rumored Paradise and deep Edenic primeval skies, for the markets scarce away at the last caravansary. Since then, southering silver flocks of birds have been unaccounted for. Swallows, unnumbered moons and suns have not returned.  But, alas, the caravan billows its tawny noon. Have desert storms walled and devoured the crimson gardens, swirling and engulfing the rose-like sea, rolled and green over fragrant lands? Or perhaps my caravan has perished – devoured by demons of thirst. Or they may still live as captives of a wizard spell in palaces, ascertained and held in baroque and splendid dungeons, as in a city from the Thousand and One Nights. 






Janet Hamill is a poet and spoken word artist; she has published six collections of her poetry, the latest being Knock (Spuyten Duyvil, 2016) and Body of Water (Bowery Books, 2008) nominated for the William Carlos Williams Award by the Poetry Society of America. Her first collection of short fiction, Tales from the Eternal Cafe (Three Rooms Press, 2014), was named one of the "Best Books of 2014" by Publisher's Weekly.