Carolyn Srygley-Moore reads at Snoetry: A Winter Wordfest – 1/16/2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTQLG9Ft1Q0

Poetry written and read by Carolyn Srygley-Moore
Filmed during Snoetry: A Winter Wordfest — a Lix and Kix production
at the Last Wordsmith Book Shoppe in North East, Pennsylvania on 16 January 2010
(photography & editing by John Burroughs, a.k.a. Jesus Crisis)

Carolyn Srygley-Moore is a long-ago, award-winning graduate of the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. She has been a Pushcart nominee, widely published in journals including Eclectica, Mimesis, Antioch, Stirring, & the antiwar anthology Cost of Freedom. Her digital chapbook Enough Light on the Dogwood is available at www.mimesispoetry.com. She lives in upstate New York with her husband & daughter.

Visit the poet on Facebook for more: http://www.facebook.com/csrygleymoore

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The Claw (by Carolyn Srygley-Moore)

The Claw
by Carolyn Srygley-Moore

Gentleness, despite the claw.
As one would take an orange apart, by segments, one takes apart

the source of light; what drives us

to praise music even as we destroy it, or it is taken in
by the untoward violin & shredded.

But not with pleasure. Forsaken, as one leaves

the injured bird in the bush, for her death should be wild;
taming would destroy her. Rather, purest death amongst

the weeds. Ghosts of the roadside

cattail, the wheat stalk, the goldenrod:
ghost of the man, ravaged by mini-strokes, who drove

the back roads collecting cans, cursing

the light. Pebbles of moon in the clearing, there is always
a way. The gentle. She sang halleluiah all night long,

although she had flatlined before – sang

until her pulse stopped at the forecast instant of
sunrise. Dawn. Like the motion of infant hands

in the curtains, the motion of wind. What drives us

onward, despite the claw? The words
of benediction pass over me like water.

I love water, but don’t know what it means,

as I cannot explain the pigeon
the cat caught, but did not kill.
 

* * *


“The Claw” (c) 2009 by Carolyn Srygley-Moore
all rights reserved, used with the poet’s permission

Carolyn Srygley-Moore is a long-ago, award-winning graduate of the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. She has been a Pushcart nominee, widely published in journals including Eclectica, Mimesis, Antioch, Stirring, & the antiwar anthology Cost of Freedom. Her digital chapbook Enough Light on the Dogwood is available at www.mimesispoetry.com. She lives in Upstate New York with her husband & daughter.

Changed // A Musing on Dolls (by Carolyn Srygley-Moore)

Changed // A Musing on Dolls
by Carolyn Srygley-Moore

I
The cartoon sketches are squealing.
I am watching the shadows snake against the ceiling; hear your red absence walk
across the floor.
Early this morning I put my dolls away. You,
I do not miss you, you know it // I am glad
you have gone. The way you feel, when you cannot
shut your eyes, close your hands: that’s only a thread of a habit, now,
a memory of heroin never tasted.

II
In the harvest of the journey, I realized the axis
along which the snowflake wheels
inhabited, even held fast,
my very center // But should you break away
(you broke away) the waltz gladly ended, rudely ended.
I put my dolls away.

III
It had changed you, the distant War, but I could only see it
in the darkness of your walk; you spoke of
Nothing. As one does not write
to the lover one loves, writes rather to the incidental
one-night-stand. I too put my loss aside, began gulping in
the grasses & the rivers & the blue blue sky. I looked in the baggage
car, it was piled to the hilt with limbs of the wounded,
like bits of tinder, remembered tree. The treerings, set loose,
took flight…

IV
There is a given hope, stupid stupid hope,
that the human body is only the corpus of a doll. It changes you, true obsession,
or war. War in deserts without water, sand caked in the lines of your hand.
Somebody above you in rank reads all your letters.
There are no secrets. There is no truth like youth & beauty, betrayed,
like the figures on the Grecian Urn, stepping out from the clay
casket in one piece, & speaking dialect. Then
laughing like the cartoon, little colored things, in motion // like
landmines in their implosion // children seeking silver blown to bits.

V
Shut up, you say: to your eyes, your hands.
Put away the damned, the damning dolls.
There is peace somewhere right now, somewhere, but
molecules clash in the bone-cup of my palm.
 

* * *


“Changed // A Musing on Dolls” (c) 2009 by Carolyn Srygley-Moore
all rights reserved, used with the poet’s permission

Carolyn Srygley-Moore is a long-ago, award-winning graduate of the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. She has been a Pushcart nominee, widely published in journals including Eclectica, Mimesis, Antioch, Stirring, & the antiwar anthology Cost of Freedom. Her digital chapbook Enough Light on the Dogwood is available at www.mimesispoetry.com. She lives in Upstate New York with her husband & daughter.

You Speak of Your Mother Putting Pins in Butterflies (by C. Srygley-Moore)

You Speak of Your Mother Putting Pins in Butterflies
by Carolyn Srygley-Moore

I
My memory is rather of my brother
tacking the exotic tropical beings to cardboard backings
then sheathed in pockets of clear plastic
like unborn tattoos
(I am not certain of the instant in which death occurred)

& he came to the hospital when I fell ill
& we went into the visiting area where you could hear the screaming
& he paged through the book

quietly weeping, explaining the target marks on the wing,
what rendered some poisonous, some food,
some a methodology for compass in migration…
& he whispered once, before leaving, his shirt drenched with sweat,
“Carolyn can you come out to play…,” weeping
while folding the butterflies away

II
& then boating on the sea, past red & yellow fishing villages,
as if painted on the hills in great tilting strokes of primary colors
& my brother leaning forward into the empty air
with a paper cup (so memory serves me) filled with air
& sunlight & the redolence of rainwater // & gently
crushing them // or no, keeping them perfectly

shaped like funeral lilies pressed
between wax paper, only to tack them again to a backing,
in sheathes like the transparent pages
in medical textbooks
(the instant of death eludes me)

III
or raising the larva from egg,
bearing it in a small tent until it girthed into chrysalis
only to watch it peel forth, colors pealing
to take the spirit from it like a glinting silverfish
by whatever means science exalted
& show the wings to the officials at the Smithsonian
for it is about that, our envy
for we have no wings…& no immanent motive
to migrate each season

IV
& we tend toward the immolation
immolation of youth // beauty // truth
(the instant of death yet eludes)
 



* * *


“You Speak of Your Mother Putting Pins in Butterflies” (c) 2009 by Carolyn Srygley-Moore
all rights reserved, used with the poet’s permission

Carolyn Srygley-Moore is a long-ago, award-winning graduate of the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. She has been a Pushcart nominee, widely published in journals including Eclectica, Mimesis, Antioch, Stirring, & the antiwar anthology Cost of Freedom. Her digital chapbook Enough Light on the Dogwood is available at www.mimesispoetry.com. She lives in Upstate New York with her husband & daughter.

The Face of the Constellation // The Fist of the Earth (by C. Srygley-Moore)

The Face of the Constellation // The Fist of the Earth
by Carolyn Srygley-Moore

1
The face I cannot remember as I can remember the fist,
or the glue sticks of his eyes, facing the ceiling
as his face always faced-off the stars, real or imaginary…

As the surgeon bearing bad tidings
carries his head that way…

2
Human splendor lies in your laughter, in the way
the lust-cry rises like heat in winter, coiling tails;

or how the grasses bear the tarot reading of the moonlight
more effectively than the paid hands. &
the unicorn that the archer came home with, slung over his shoulder
like a stag, turned out to be a goat with a horn,
a dirty goat at that; no milk, either.

3
& I can smell the war as I can smell the darkness,
even when slathered with jam & butter, the war, the darkness.

The boat of the sun circling the skyscape.
You know, here, winter is always, even as the forsythia
blazes gold, even as the plum turns white & pink.

The scales of the sky are the human scab… peeling,
for between us lies, always, the butcher’s gash,
inflicted by the Other or self-inflicted…reeling with the stars,

4
the significance of loving // of being human,
the skeins that tie us, restrain us, make sure we are unbroken
when we return to the light, eternal or other, & play piano

in the toy dollhouse our children either
gladly inherit, or disinherit…

5
The faces I cannot recall, as I can recall the fist,
creases in the knuckles like crow’s feet, as elegant as that.
& in the smell of the light, too, is the smell of all givens.
is the smell of peacedom, like that, too.

Yes, & the cry rose to the ceiling, & he looked at her
as the deer looks, as she bounds, but not away; golden woodlands;
trail-blazing, fact of godlight…

not toward, but not away
 



* * *


“The Face of the Constellation // The Fist of the Earth” (c) 2009 by Carolyn Srygley-Moore
all rights reserved, used with the poet’s permission

Carolyn Srygley-Moore is a long-ago, award-winning graduate of the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. She has been a Pushcart nominee, widely published in journals including Eclectica, Mimesis, Antioch, Stirring, & the antiwar anthology Cost of Freedom. Her digital chapbook Enough Light on the Dogwood is available at www.mimesispoetry.com. She lives in Upstate New York with her husband & daughter.

Swans & Ducks, Skating: November Rain (by Carolyn Srygley-Moore)

Swans & Ducks, Skating: November Rain
by Carolyn Srygley-Moore

I
At any time, I can return to your form as to a field
unfolding into a certain eternity; mallard ducks at dusk skating
the pond in circles around you, the point
at the center, amidst snowed-in houses. How

you would lie upon me like an anchor,
like a ballast of violets on a stage where language was
forbidden, & you would empty into me, & I was
a flower opening to the rain. The pulse of sky, the rain.

II
Perfection is hidden like that. An unreality,
so real when it occurs, like the photograph
of the eye, up close, of your eye, indeed, so close
I can see the visions driven behind it. Sketching

III
the structure of the human eye! Grass is stubble
pealing through new snowfall, almost
last year’s grass, a 5 o’clock shadow
the sun cannot restore to what the one-armed man
wants. As I recall swimming one morning

in the lake when the swans were sleeping
with the green-crowned ducks
& “splash” // a man with one leg entered, skipping
currents around him, of the faith

IV
that confronts despair as the sunflower confronts
the light, not to follow it, no, but to demand why.

* * *

“Swans & Ducks, Skating: November Rain” (c) 2009 by Carolyn Srygley-Moore
all rights reserved, used with the poet’s permission

Carolyn Srygley-Moore
is a long-ago, award-winning graduate of the Johns Hopkins University
Writing Seminars. She has been a Pushcart nominee, widely published in
journals including Eclectica, Mimesis, Antioch, Stirring, & the antiwar anthology Cost of Freedom. Her digital chapbook Enough Light on the Dogwood is available at www.mimesispoetry.com. She lives in Upstate New York with her husband & daughter.

Homesickness & The Machines (by Carolyn Srygley-Moore)

Homesickness & The Machines
by Carolyn Srygley-Moore

There was a dream: a beautiful ancient hospital
one could reach across seven bridges // where the spoked lanterns
could not be distinguished from desire: & in the rooms
the wounded sat before great machines
with great black dogs at their feet:
machines that healed their souls. There was a dream.

The homeless vet stood on the bridge
carrying a sign like a ransom note: it all begins
with hunger, it says. & from his hand,
or a vein in his hand, springs

a lighthouse, spiraling yellow shafts
by which the lost or abandoned might find their path
home…Stars like tadpoles swimming,
skinned commas of light. There were people

in the passage, shoveling
footprints from the sand, spades like the very dragons of the sea;
who could find his way back?
Vision was one of the elements, brutal as all beginnings.
Your hands were too grimy for lust or love.

The very air, shiny like the gesture the wounded one makes
when informed his soul is wounded no more; is
restored, like the hand in the photograph,

that is not real, but computer graphics…

but real enough to those sick for home.
In a place where the bridge arcs
from island to hospital,
& the trains & the planes & the plans run no more.

* * *

“Homesickness & the Machines” (c) 2009 by Carolyn Srygley-Moore
all rights reserved, used with the poet’s permission

Carolyn Srygley-Moore is a long-ago, award-winning graduate of the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. She has been a Pushcart nominee, widely published in journals including Eclectica, Mimesis, Antioch, Stirring, & the antiwar anthology Cost of Freedom. Her digital chapbook Enough Light on the Dogwood is available at www.mimesispoetry.com. She lives in Upstate New York with her husband & daughter.