*This poem appeared on the Aleph Review website in Nov 4, 2020
After the work of the female surrealist painter Remedios Varo
Often no more than a grayish cast of rain
she is fluent in conjugations
And half measures
(a bright pelling, a water show)
Her ache to mark the truth,
Keeps her behind a veil
Each text is a tiny pile of stones-
She receives them with her hands by her sides
Eyes that are platinum,
Gatherers
Not swimmers or prone to sing
Around her, an aureole splinters meekly
It singes to warp
the chrome fuzz of her hair
When she speaks
Her words fleck the air;
Wry, engine red,
Water-balloons
Descending into flame
When the words shed their attire
They are poor snakes, coat-less, un-glossed
Her words, concern the earth,
They do not fall
They do not court the eroding fact
like confetti
They flatten to a common fringe
(The door lightens to filament
Her feet leave her, in a flush of rain
Tiny batmen thunder exculpations
Court her, insisting
You are not you
You are not your given body)
Figures looking at a sculpture of gauze spectacles (at the Ejaz Art Gallery)*
* This poem appeared in ‘Trigger’ published by Pandemonium Publications in 2019
For a split second,
Finely calibrated
She seemed to hover, not
At the edge of herself
(All that fine moonlit hair)
But on the stem of the
Glasses she had found,
An ant-like grinning creature,
Unlikely equilibrist,
Tonguing,
The cheap gauze stems
Of these unlikely monocles,
Representing a kind of condition,
Representing a split infinitive
of sellable thought.
She teetered soon enough,
As a boy, shrunken
To a wisp of his size,
Joined her
On that rustling bridge.
His selene- irises,
The beswept urgency of his brain
Toppling them
Into rye-colored
Plastic fields.
Now, housed
In the eye of a God
Obsessed with his wheat-sack hammock
They chortle over rotting seeds
And nip at the gilt embrasures
Of their world.
Her spectacles
Offer no glass
His cigarettes offer
No panic.
Once in a red moon
They lay down arms
Over
A rainless kiss.
*An art gallery in Lahore, Pakistan
Study of three figures in lockdown
Figure 1.
Not at all like the eldest Bronte’s
Trapped schoolmistress
Bent over her spindle of
Dust
Not at all like a housewife
Spilling over her dress
And onto the walls
As if her skin immanent
But acrylic,
As if her skin seam-choked
With curling linguine, truffle-butter
Wreaths of Parmesan and crumbling bulbs
of cheddar
Trapped schoolmistress
Bent over her spindle of
Dust
Not at all like a housewife
Spilling over her dress
And onto the walls
As if her skin immanent
But acrylic,
As if her skin seam-choked
With curling linguine, truffle-butter
Wreaths of Parmesan and crumbling bulbs
of cheddar
How ready to be parceled,
twined in waxed paper,
How ready to be inhaled off the
Varnish of hung,
Moulting canvases
Figure 2.
twined in waxed paper,
How ready to be inhaled off the
Varnish of hung,
Moulting canvases
Figure 2.
One cake isn't enough-
Past thickest midnight-
She licks crisping fondant, off
A peppermint tuft
Discards the fork,
Hangs head;
teeth first.
Figure 3.
Past thickest midnight-
She licks crisping fondant, off
A peppermint tuft
Discards the fork,
Hangs head;
teeth first.
Figure 3.
He wonders where his index finger
Has been spirited as
A nightmare-cherub lassoes
His neck to a dream-pillow
With finely cobbled strings of rattan
(Or his guitar spliced to separate its strings from
It’s limber torso)
He cannot touch his knees
They have been replaced with feathery tufts
Of factory air
The right hubcap of his skull,
Is now, to his touch,
A firm, three-headed, torque of sage,
His eye, is gloomy, vitric,
And the red of fruit.
He deep-swells to a dumbness
Of joints and music.
At his doorstep
His girl bears gifts for his
Well of throat,
His hands that, were once bolsters for hawks
Are now, twigs of salt;
Unstable elements.
Love elements.
Bionote
Afshan Shafi lives in Lahore and has studied English Literature and International Relations at The University of Buckingham and Webster Graduate School London. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY, Poetry Wales, Blackbox Manifold, Flag + Void, and 3am magazine. Her poems have also appeared in the anthologies, Smear (edited by Greta Bellamacina), The New River Press Yearbook, and When They Start To Love You As A Machine You Should Run (edited by Heathcote Ruthven). She has previously served as a poetry editor for The Missing Slate and is currently a poetry editor at the Aleph Review.
Has been spirited as
A nightmare-cherub lassoes
His neck to a dream-pillow
With finely cobbled strings of rattan
(Or his guitar spliced to separate its strings from
It’s limber torso)
He cannot touch his knees
They have been replaced with feathery tufts
Of factory air
The right hubcap of his skull,
Is now, to his touch,
A firm, three-headed, torque of sage,
His eye, is gloomy, vitric,
And the red of fruit.
He deep-swells to a dumbness
Of joints and music.
At his doorstep
His girl bears gifts for his
Well of throat,
His hands that, were once bolsters for hawks
Are now, twigs of salt;
Unstable elements.
Love elements.
Bionote
Afshan Shafi lives in Lahore and has studied English Literature and International Relations at The University of Buckingham and Webster Graduate School London. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY, Poetry Wales, Blackbox Manifold, Flag + Void, and 3am magazine. Her poems have also appeared in the anthologies, Smear (edited by Greta Bellamacina), The New River Press Yearbook, and When They Start To Love You As A Machine You Should Run (edited by Heathcote Ruthven). She has previously served as a poetry editor for The Missing Slate and is currently a poetry editor at the Aleph Review.
No comments:
Post a Comment