Five chthonic praise-chants
from the manuscript
Tidal Flats
have been recently published in
Issue 6 (Modern Bestiary Issue) of
 |
| Cover art: Sailing the Salton Sea by Vanessa Compton |
You can read them
There is also a video.
More on the praise-chants
(how they came about)
can be found on a previous blog
(here)
when several of the chants were published
by Mudlark back in January.
********************************
Meanwhile, several more praise-chants were recently published by
(in early June, 2021, Issue 54)
with amazing cover art for the issue
by Yvonne Ontiveros
You can purchase a copy here:
Here’s one previous published in Cholla Needles 48:
Red-Black Hollyhock Chthonic Praise-Chant
This is the red in black black in red
Where earth meets underworld inside the eye
Bridge between left and right hemispheres
Between the magpie’s left eye and the wasp birthed out
of the bleached deer skull
Between tantalizing bat wings and the sweet-rot smell
of datura
This is the red in black black in red
Shaking when too many bodies crowd close or figures
appear in the dark
Shadows of walking apple trees
Apple cores give birth to predators with phosphorescent
organ-balls dangling in front of a black mouth
whispering the name of the river that cries beneath
the earth
This is the red in black black in red
Feeble fingers that barely made it to the surface during
the summer sink back
Retreat is the color beneath the color of pain
Blind sockets stare deep into the crows woven out of nettle
leaves and stems that line the wall right before dawn
This is the flower that remembers the sea of stones near the
asphodel field
Keeps repeating what the under-wind culled from those stones
Flower that murdered the unmarked grave
Opened a black-red mouth channel to the underworld where
the dead gather around a radio listening to random
words that pass over the flower
This is the black in red red in the black
The body that steps from the apple trunk from the stone pile
from the blue streetlight from a book tossed in the
compost heap
The body that watches the drifting cigarette smoke of a woman
grieving her dead child
Of her partner watching her mute unable to speak
This is the black in red red in black
Announcement of winter in mid-summer
Rain-stick shower of long-dead gourd-purple ants across
the back of my neck across the upper shoulders
What else did I expect when leaning too close to the door
where after begins
The eye the finger the lips that are no longer lips
Mirror of my death
