COLLABORATIONS

Come Apart and Cauldron
Collaboration with Phyllis Ewen

COME APART

: I see

Icing   white frosting    trod-down snow
aged undyed hair combed across earth’s flat head, earth’s
flat-top head

I’m looking at    not down at
land shifting, locked shapes unlocking

The more I see the more I    
see a pulsing, a settling, not a    no, not a
collapse    unstrengthening, weakening    but a reaching 
for a right-now
sure footing    as if earth can find footing—
spinning, afterall, and
in flames

: I see

A sliced
biopsy sample filling the conference-room
powerpoint screen
Findings stated, debated 
agreed on, challenged
all the above
Front row experts claim the evidence
Policymakers one row back text
emoji and confetti showers
to their kids 

: I see

Shift, jolt, fracture    lurches and
skews     a deep jagged hole filling fast, the hole
filling with
dry throat-scratch air and
humid hair-curling air    some say air thick
with hostility    I say hostile air
we are    hostile to    earth and earth’s
air 

: This split fracture became

A river    roused and angry, yet
sparkling current    crumbling swollen banks    
then    drought, parch, thirst    the river-   
bed we hiked along
kicked your rainbow rubber ball across
spread the striped picnic blanket
on its pebble    on its silt   
The frayed wicker basket lid   bread’s
still-warm crust
Fox tiptoeing closer 

: Come apart

Earth’s inner earth come apart    and I    be-
come a part of    the shift
jolt, lurch
fracture not yet done with its doing    
However far to the side
off side    I stand
or peering    down from a mirror
tossed to the sky    or
up from reflection in broken slivers, yes   
face it
I am a part 

: Under standing

If not standing I’m sitting    cross-legged or
crouched in a squat
The sand under my toes    bar, beach, dune—
emptied shells ground to flake, rock
ground to powder 

From the erased horizon the moon
barrels down a candlepin lane    
directly to anyone looking    a no-split strike 

Since I am who I was back then
the boardwalk’s storm-jimmied slats trip me
when I skip ahead    splinters and sprain 

Under my standing, earth
suffers the weight of possibility’s wait 

Under its standing invitation my RSVP
is long overdue
Here, too    possibility’s weight

The Space Between
Denise Bergman and artist Phyllis Ewen. Marran Gallery, Lesley University

IS IS WAS
One language disappears from the world every two weeks

Clawed consonants in rubble.
The h or s before and, the weighted n, the d lost in the rumble too

and of course the vowels.
What if instead the stranded alphabet was pulled back in—
the circle is elastic,
sometimes we find our way home.

Twice a month a language is sentenced, a string of words
hangs, drops, disappears.
Meaning explodes.
Metaphor collapses or shatters.
Fine-tuned articulation

snaps. Shreds of subtlety—
the spoken

no longer lived, the lived no longer spoken.
Chips and burrs of intonation,
slivers of inflection, shiftless dunes.

If a woman comes looking for her history tell her it is lost.
Tell her the phonemes are sand.

Published in Denver Quarterly