Louisa Storer
Two Poems
Sonnet (5)
Origins
Suppose a flock of diamonds were not as happy as suspected.As a bloody spear shot somewhere from the darkness the third wall
collapsed and audience convinced stage to believe that fire
was indeed a misery meant to refute any redemptive
theory of the gods. That is the meaning of to go without sleep.
When a name assumes the mischief of the incantatory and one’s
otherwise tasteful fingers sparkle with witchery. Sorcery
speaks delightfully in such circumstances. The hum of the mother
busy in one’s breath as one dismantles home in pursuit of contraband.
The bags of kittens arranged by color: tabbies divided from
marmalades and tortoiseshells. Babies upon babies all a-splash
in their baby bathtubs.Until the diabolical mewling
and babble stops as blocked (on a dime) as a rune ceases to spell
doom in spilt salt upon the kitchen floor and the baby is put to bed.
Babies
No, what really begs consideration when while: late sun cuts buildings like talc
and the metal power plant looks to solder hot and orange as pipe as a reckoning,
is the pull of babies. Not their gravity per se as they distill in puddles
of gas and water in a webbing we limit as solar system. Not their bodies:
the allure of dreadfully pink surfaces and nub toes collectible
as moon rocks.
In all work, there is a point rather than a range when medium will fail.
When an alloy common as adaptation and inessential as blood shudders
into birth. It is almost laughable: the wars invented into wars for that.
In one corner, the winged and in the other the foolhardy. Jewelry and
bomb-making are no different. There is always a flash like foil catching light
before reaction swells in duty like the plague and the flora and fauna like bull kelp
and killer barracuda must decide on the spot under water in rook
whether to merely sprout tentacles or die. The babies are like that: all need
at dusk: little weathervanes dressed up in copper as nanny goats and cockerels
and humpback whales, little litmus tests humming to the old man eggplant river,
tickertape parades with conquering hearts deciding if survival is worth the paper.
