· the cultural society · » Wes Benson

A Stone Woman Gives Birth to a Child at Night

Wes Benson — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 11:00:43 +0000

City trees, an interval of silence, noon.
(The moment Mahlers through me.)

Ought thought: a narrowness
birth-canaled towards the truth of her.

To sip her in a cup of water:
water’s whirlwind, comprehended.

A laurel, deep within its winter sleep,
dreams of her, and is devoured.

Verb tenses divide us: mine so often past,
hers always present, present, present.

Elsewhere, we flicker at the edge of vision:
quiet birds in walnut, quince.

I pass the bow across her naked back,
the sound she makes a turning into womb.

The feel of her, in every guise, an oracle.
(Every loss a ghost foreseen by her.)

Clutched by voices, I intone my recognitions,
taste the molten gold of her in praising it.

A Stone Woman Gives Birth to a Child at Night

Wes Benson — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 11:00:42 +0000

Her flavor is
            the grief of honeysuckle
            a prophet’s winter garden
            the word for grasp in every language
            a would-be father’s premonition of regret
            a window slowly brightening
            green shade as spoken of in a lost verse of scripture
            a frock of honey bees
            a yellow cloud above the thought of paradise
            night-bleach
            a dream vacation full of firm, exhausted bodies
            a holy gate that never, ever closes
            a field of wild poppies, tremoring with secrets
            the possibility of leaving what I’ve been behind
            beyond the hurricane of evidence
            delight in edges, endings
            what’s left when all but truth is stripped from me

A Stone Woman Gives Birth to a Child at Night

Wes Benson — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 11:00:39 +0000

The inner spinning like a Rand McNally globe.
(The place her finger lands, blindly: my name.)

·

Yellow stripes of winter air
to strip the eye of its reproofs.

·

Her, imploring: “Touch.”

·

An eyelash threaded through
a sewing needle’s eye.

·

A game she plays some nights:
no lights, no brakes.

·

The way she’ll stir her first drink
with her third finger.

·

A decorative map-
pain.

·

An open window in the thought of money.
(The scary feeling as I scissor under, out.)

·

The smoke inside her laugh’s
red brick chimney.

·

A prick of blood that beads
and hymns itself.

·

A wasp that wakes in February:
raveling, unraveling.

·

The first and only question posed by
unfed transparency.

A Stone Woman Gives Birth to a Child at Night

Wes Benson — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 11:00:03 +0000

To speak of unknowing in the language of knowing
To ride the sun down to the horizon of unknowing

To touch the new shoots of hazelnut leaves with red
To ink shadows as the alders burst into flame

To double as my own interlocutor among strangers

To search my medical records for an early, saving illness
To discover what it meant to be that child
To discover what it really means
To discover the white hind of what it really means

To pursue the white hind among auriferous ideas, voices, realms
To lose her in the dark

To forget
To hear her crying Here I am and think it’s just an echo of my own voice

To find the first place
To find the first place

To ask the question into which it vanishes
To smell the scent of blood on the air

To find the first place
To grope for it as if with roots
To shed the bark of years
To taste the coming storm among the branches

To catch sight of the white hind again
To catch sight of what has happened

To de-sanctify what’s happened
To sleep as it re-sanctifies itself

To learn the names of things at last
To turn around

To turn my back

To return, but not by the way I came

To wash away the radiance from my tongue.

Night Is A Sea I Have Named in Her Honor

Wes Benson — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 12:00:48 +0000

The mark of her refusals mars my face.
The mark is a mouth to sing with.