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Of Shapes & Shadows June 2005 Click to view Table of Contents Click to view photo gallery Click to view cover story |
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| Poetry 4 pieces By corey mesler Shadow Children
The shadow children do not grow; they are negative light. You have seen their signs. They are as black as any widow, as black as the close of sleep. At night on the road you may occasionally see them, the reflection of nothing against nothing. They are soot. They lay their head down outdoors. On your lawn, in an empty field, they yawn. And their yawn obliterates starlight, is as deep as any ending. Shadow Pedagogy Between my brother (b. 1949) and myself (1955) my mother had a tubular pregnancy which rocked her body like a clock thrown against a wall. She was hospital-bound for weeks. So, I have this ghost brother or sister, this might-have-been, who sometimes visits me, in my hours of personal terror and discouragement, the kind which is so singular it separates us from our peers. He or she (it’s still hard to tell) sits near me and whispers in my ear: you are everything, why are you sitting in your chair, while the world spins like a funhouse and your children roll down the sidewalk like coins of bright promise, little legacies of light? Shadows on the Wall
The sister, maybe my sister, said it’s dark as a rosary in here. I lit a candle for the future, for a present. What’s that funk, she furthered. I spent the rest of the morning making up personal gods, to satisfy her curiosity and my own wayward Jansenism. Later she left. It’s quiet in my cave. A Space A hole the shape of South America in the opaque glass of our bathroom window at work lets in a little piece of blue sky the shape of South America, a cloud resting on it like a white cigar. |
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