Viscissitudes
I.
Each time
something in
me breaks,
more birdseed
spills out like a
trail and the
finches
congregate
just inside my
ribcage. I keep
hearing Orhan
Veli converse
with
a festival and an
escaping sky. I
keep hearing
birds chirping his
work. I keep
noticing feathers.
II.
It is a hushed morning in winter.
It is still dark.
The neighbor’s cows rumble.
Each time I woke last night was
the vanishing sky. Left behind
was a hollow olive of sadness
like when my brother died. This is
not the same. Now the finch is
listening to Czeslaw Milosz. The
finch understands each word. The
finch sings to me. She sings,
possibly, it is the same.
III.
If I could follow
the empty sky I
would find him in a
herd of galloping
horses.
IV.
When I am on
the tail of
the night
the finches
lasso me.
V.
Things broken: a
box of matches
a guitar string
the moth wing
his tooth the
color red.
VI.
A field of finches
whirl when I step
on the porch to
fill the feeders.
As long as I am here
they will have food and
drink. Each seed a
world, each eave
shelter from thundering
hooves.
The Brain In Modules
1.
I’ve got my mojo back watching Victoria Chang because she wrote that the self is only a rumor, which has the rhythm of truth but invalidates what I’ve been searching for the past six years. What freedom! I keep talking to my dead family in melodies but if the self is a rumor maybe they are, too.
2.
Some scientific breakthrough paper just announced that at birth and at death our brains function in modules. Is that why my feet skip across and over and up and down to the latest rhythm that infiltrates my right eye? Take parrotfish, they know how to nibble a reef. Take sneakers, they know how to scale a cliff. Take the bees in my belly, the diminishing honey supply. The angels running up and down my spine.
3.
This kid I know likes to scare the shit out of me. Even though I know it’s coming, he gets me every time. My personal tuning fork. I tell him to keep scaring me just for the
vibrational lift. I’ve got my mojo watching and now I am a skipping stone. Each time my self splashes the water I come out someone new without a story.
4.
I debate notifying my dead family.
I have had muddles with my sleeping mother
and my agitated dad. The muddle that
pisses me off today is my dead brother who
couldn’t wait until January to overdose.
What the hell?
I used to like Christmas.
This grieving self is an old self, a self pre-
occupied, a self that was only a rumor. My
new self––
Message from Orion the Hunter
While doing my planks this morning, I
read that Tracy K. Smith thinks maybe
the dead know the universe and then I
stumble on Microcosmos by the Polish
poet I like (so much) where she sees
the universe under the glass of a
microscope and it is a cold fear that
still blows. It’s only when the wind falls
like a stone that I will be honest
(maybe), and tell you I think every
baby enters earth knowing it all, they
beam it through their eyes, hungry
screams, insatiable appetites. A
universe always wanting more and I
recall last night when the three sisters
sucked me into their vortices and
showered me with love so all I could
do was emit. This old universe – it will
always want more of whatever we give
it. It is a hungry spirit and eats
everything
without discrimination
Kristy Snedden is a trauma psychotherapist, poet and artist. Her poetry is widely published nationally and internationally. Among other honors, her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and for Best of the Net. Her two chapbooks, Crows & Angels and Give Me a Kiss are available on Amazon. She created Brainspotting Through the Poet’s Eye to share her love of poetry with other creatives and founded the literary journal Bone to Brain to provide a platform for anyone touched by the power of Brainspotting to share their creative work. Her poetry and art use imagery and metaphor to combine the strange and the surrealistic with everyday sights and experiences. This juxtaposition intrigues her audience and instills hope for a more magical world, while addressing the difficult issues that plague our world. She spends her free time hiking near her home in the foothills of Appalachia and listening to her husband and their dog tell tall tales. www.kristysnedden.com
