In September 1766 the Spanish frigate El Nuevo
Constante…...ran into a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico and sank.…..the ship’s
cargo contained a relatively new form of wealth: raw materials for the
flourishing global trade in dyestuffs, including 2,896 pounds of
indigo, 10,627 pounds of cochineal, 5,440 pounds of annatto,
and1,032 cut lengths of logwood weighing approximately 40,000 pounds.
– Elena Phipps, Global
Colours dyes and the dye trade
The best, most expensive and sought-after red pigments were
first made from
cochineal insects by the indigenous peoples encountered by
Spanish conquistadors invading
Mesoamerica in the 14th century. Cochineal red and
reddish-purple became the colours
of wealth and power in the old world and colonization in the
new.
Built in the
waning Jazz Age, northern Minnesota’s Naniboujou Lodge is famous
for its ceiling
paintings of the eponymous Native American character depicted
in a dazzling
amalgamation of Art Deco designs and Cree symbols and patterns.
The Better Desires
in the name of the better desires/ the exotic/ the hit or miss
of kleptocracy’s science in
preparations according to hostilities
between
cotton & nature’s dyes/ cochineal & indigo &
the
waxy glaze of seeds of the achiote tree – annatto –
animalize with blood & dung & urine stay a while
in
the dunging in useful
treatments of oils & fats in a cloth
bath
in the orange tinge in
the tuck of Turkey
Red & Miller Blue &
in
between richness & depth/ in the early bright & brilliant apply
astringents
& mordants for colourfastness
or egg albumen in the remorselessness
the blaze of
bleaching in the beforehand the essence of
colonizing
offense/ by the
sound of splash cleanse your eyelids / plucking at cushions
in the way of rising water/ in the heal or relapse/ subdued in
the raging
in the storm storm
storming my pruning knife slit to the trim/ twin fibulae
clasping the tame the tide & slick/ there’s your disassembling/ brushing
the
rulers’ brass shiny &
in my garden – bulbous rosehips plotted –
baby voles bump
& switch the bricks above sloping
sideways
tumorous/
relentless/ wavering down the walk as the last
of the China Rose
dying to the east in twenty-five-years-older
Walnut shade defines
for me utopia or its adverse/ mourning in the fugitive
flies & rubber tires spin spin spinning
my head horde finally
hushed in fadings
in the leftover mineral dunn of manganese
& antimony
& iron in the homily for pattern & meaning in the
plaintive
cloth
of privilege abridged/ hugged much in hues &
delicious
palettes/
patternings/ psychedelic blossomings – almost home now –
fill
a tub for fermentation with the dark liquor of indigo/ in the wait
&
seething/ the turbulence/ dry & harden & pulverize the mess
to
fine powder/ adding water & boiling/ skimming off twigs & leaves
of
another covering/ another provincial veneer/ add copperas & lime
&
the cloth turns yellow (turmeric makes green) oxygenating
to
the infectious blue of the decadence that drove Wordsworth’s epic
dyers/
faded or deteriorated or consoled/ or in the seeds of Pomegranate trees
planted
by the mission fathers or here at Naniboujou – that
trickster’s bier
at Lake Superior – lodged in weird & roiling painted
ceilings/ some
Frenchman of geometricities
of mathematical equations of light arriving
on the retina
mapped nativities in the name of altered or dematerialized
multitudes/
some jeremiad/ some rant some true north emendation
& every range has its story
but
I can’t
&
by my animal-ness in the entirety of creation inseparable
&
I can’t
as in ruin/ in
dusk done early or in
daybreak’s
flushed
surround an animal trots across
a lane a fox a grey a native of my
Appalachia not
red-coated colonial high times mighty
hunt & maim/
those who claim history can’t
be changed but
riveted/ indigenous
or perhaps a hound
buffed ashen or instead
coyote
brown &
grey-tipped-hiding-in-plain-
sight-council-of
clowns-Code-of-Virginia nuisance
species – that
unacknowledged irony – driven
by anthropoid incessance
from continental plains east
to blue mountains’
piedmont – no hunting license
required
to shoot them in their numbers &
& I can’t
at any time
& in any manner
that is legal
under state & local laws
* leghold traps *
* neck snares * * duodenal poisons *
& seventy-five
bucks bounty if you turn in
the severed head gutted hide
///
Killing contests are organized events
in which
participants compete for prizes — typically
cash or hunting
equipment – for killing the most and/or
largest animals
within a specified time period.
Contests may
also be judged by a system
that allocates
a number of points for each species
by gender such
as “largest male” or “smallest
female” or by characteristics
such as
“biggest ears” or “mangiest mutt.”[1]
///
bodies dumped by the side of the road after the awarding of
* raccoons
squirrels woodchucks *
* mountain lions
wolves *
& I can’t
///
& in wintering fluorescence & among my dearest
possessions
my coyotes own me/ possessed
of my years on decades’
responsibilities
for this place/ for the wild
me
of them & them of me not curb nor reckless
as abandonment of
things in the way
of bipedal greed
& it’s nothing nothing
for a body’s overcome
in whole/ sharp & longing – we are after all the
sport
-killing species – & every range has its story
in flesh logic
& as woman likewise
bled out in the
birth of European science I know these two
-fisted distinctions as unsaid instead
I hear the hard
stub/ the takes & givens thickly whispered
in words &
phrases
like hellbent & God
given
Root Cellar
Dugout or Harmony According to Utiusque Cosmi Vol. 1
sing down the
back hall/ exactly/ welcomely
barefoot
take the slack
steps to the root cellar’s stone
foundation/ dugout
bounty held over season-to-season
in the name
of poor-ass cracker plenty
* when I need
it I want it most*
I’m not so brave
but dream the world a black hole
past my piss &
vinegar – another mansion fired
& burnt – I’m not so bad
but good at heart
cleansing my demons
in solid rains of
conjure up
past spring & summer
pleasures – the whole batch
in store for
winter – a crib/ a bushel
a burlap sackfull
of wrinkled Pippins & row upon
row
of quart jars accounting or craving
* take it eat it *
that naturally relentlessly
renews itself
amongst disorderly patches
of onions
& potatoes & repurposed tin cans
full of dirt & dillweed & sage
& in the wide spot between
my
once-upon-a-time tracks
under the escarpment
which maidenhair
fern sheaths dead steel
* plush & rust *
I’m a strange
stubborn sorcering old woman/ I won’t
go with you with you but
attend
an animal’s flight
& plaint/ the howling
frantic
nose-to-the-ground
of a hunting hound
lost in the woods
* plantar ball/
digital ball/ carpal ball *
*
temporo-maxillary articulation *
around here they
raise them penned/ hunger-mad
unsocialized
my bottommost
voice & regular pails of kibble
fail to bring him
in/ shunned
I live below
descent I stay the song of
spheres
* tragedy = sun comedy = earth *
a cappella is the instrument
sung from my center/ whole
in intervallic
harmonies in the upper principle of light
moved down to dark
& at the
interstice/ the might/ the psalm
of a spearpoint
– vestige culture makes me
lust after
evidence: mammoths & mastodons
& giant bison
stalked &
exterminated – or in competing ideologies
or scientific
anomalies or magically lured
by charred
hearthstones & megafauna’s paleofeces
& Pliocene bones of Ursus
abstrusus & ancient
sea mariners’ first glimpse
of America or
in this morning’s face-to-face – each of us
mulling the
all-in-all/ calculating ascendancy
& order
– she sizes me up with her apex predator
ursine eyes takes her time
before turning away
unperturbed & trundling off deeper
into the timber
The common name for Marmota monax –
woodchuck – derives from the Algonquian wuchak
meaning digger; in tribal legend Grandmother
Woodchuck teaches patience & wisdom.
incaendo
i.
as the marmot’s cavil
I’m
exegesis of dark-land huddle/ exquisitely homely
in
my intimate geography/ at crepuscular dawn’s step-
ball-change
I’m a good but sleepless farmer’s
*
kick & spit *
I
put my head down * & dig
*
not
– for now – questioning what does flesh want as certain
instincts
bring me – at one fell swoop –
melancholy
&
joy but in every best & worst aspect I’m
*
dappled burn & spellbound *
set
alight at daybreak in this hole under the house
I’m
affliction beneath your floorboards – my incisors grown
longer/
sharper every day – I tease the cat
behind a pane
of
glass/ as hoary a ghost’s firm scuttling my pig whistle’s
your
warning/ overhead your young play * Dvorak
by
heart * as like to two groundhogs touching
fiercely
ardent/
nose to mouth one
to
another in naso-oral * contact * I’m the grandmothers’
legends
of horse sense & hilarity in shivering seed heads
in
hope of grace I’m every old woman’s
mother/
spotted as the wrinkled skin I don’t try
to
hide across the foreheads of your hills/ obscure/ unpolished
I’m
the furry warden of your fallen places/ your ruins
burrowed
in the ground & who but me wants to live here
anymore/
it’s too hard to sell or even sort the stuff you’ve left
behind
at your worst & mine/ at my * upshot * I’m feed
for
your cosseted carnivore pet:
*
ground-beaver meat * * ground-beaver bones *
*
my heart/ my lungs/ my liver *
ii.
in cloudless light
I
said go down to the citadel
&
give word away undimmed as in an old Christian lady’s
umpteenth
trip to China each time smuggling forty
pounds
of bibles in her backpack – the beatific officer-in-
charge
takes half the haul & keeps one for
himself –
*
for themselves *
my
father & stepfather each said see you
around to me the last time I saw them as they lay in
the same
room
in the same wing dying one year apart
*
see you around * * & where’s the wisdom in *
iii.
Cosmesis is the preservation/ restoration
or
bestowing of bodily beauty also cherry
plums
though invasive in some parts & also a piece
of
your hair I saved it/ seventeen inches
long & lustrous
my
mother wrote * remember that *
also
trees hoarding slews of our cuts & scars I
don’t know
how
much/ how many
*
yield & pine * & no one
especially
not me the wiser redressing my disfigurements
my defects/ cosmesis
after the incision true
I
come from a place where people don’t round
off
the edges where every wound’s a lucky piece
&
a bluff’s a slant worked up to pitch & cherry plum
puree’s
also the recipe for beauty/ spread
the
mask finely & wait 20 minutes before rinsing with warm water
for
smooth & naturally glowing
///
* burn* *fire * * ignify* *inflame *
///
& also my grandmother’s hundred-year-old walnut
dropleaf
table – agleam in sunlight raked through sashed
muff-glass
windows – has seen more of this world
than
she ever did
///
& also & despite & yet I ascend a tenant of this fevered
class
but captured by my past & in it
coffered
– square nails & plain planed ash – & by these times
this
profane maze of eos I vow the opposite
of
revanche from revindicare
– to claim
or avenge – I rest the moral high ground/ purblind
as
a bellflower & in my humbling I’m
emancipated
iv.
defenceless laid bare as the bright red
path
of a beast wounded & tracked/ front foot
opposite
hind look ahead of the chase
animals
follow paths of slightest impediment
I’m
too tuned in to mortal vice yet insufficiently
versed
in the book of fine wild & mystery fingering
grandma’s
jet beads in churchy perfections in rosary merger
*
of rose paste rolled & set in pot metal *
*
strung on lengths of ragged thread *
exchanged
for prayers spent with a soundless
*
thud *
traded
for a rude & precious message
* kindling * *lighting
up*
these
wretched times – still – advanced by raw degrees
or
stymied beyond in
*
spirit * * temper * * shade *
*
spit on an index finger/ check the way of the wind *
I’m
imposter adrift or battered
& bettered
fractionally
by hours days months years paroled
at
this late stage/ discarnate – inchambered
in
word & light & faith –
I take the rise room
the
only one to hold me
Dumbarton Oaks
Catalogue of the Collection 1946/ Apolausis or Enjoyment
* Plate 127 *
pictured
a woman’s
byzantine parure/ brilliant set
* with pearls rubies & sapphires
*
* fastened with roundels of gold *
* linked in chain of
braided gold & prime emeralds *
* Plate 103 *
pictured
an ornamented
flabellum
* a breath of mobile phalanges
in partial gilt *
* cherubim dressed in parchment
& silk *
* bordered in serpentine peacock feathers
*
& imagine
sitting at a dais with fans the size of a raptor’s
wings at either hand waving away
* insects from the
unconsecrated *
///
& imagine never ever again to work for what I want no more
* tables to serve *
* toilets to clean *
* griddles scrubbed shiny with a
grill brick *
imagine target
practice any day hard
& tough as
core
– the source the cost –
* & all I have is this .22 *
* & buckshot just
inside the bedroom window *
* Plate 247 *
pictured
boar hunt in
Coptic wool
* a right-paneled figure one hand upraised
the other grasping a bow & arrow
*
* the blue-eyed bushy-yellow-haired
archer draws & aims at the wild
swine *
* Plate 185 *
pictured
Apolausis or Enjoyment
* the bust of a girl holding a
flower *
* veil earrings necklace bracelet *
* enclosed in a border of guilloche
*
* sinuous interlaced ribbons *
* a mosaic with inscription forming
the bottom of a bathing pool *
* Work of Unknown Provenance
*
not pictured
reticence &
regrets & shames belied
by good manners hammered
into the have-not
& for honour or more to the point
indulgence is the downside
of this
meritocracy clasping laurel leaves
at the summit’s
base & no higher
& imagine the
purplish bruise of heaven as berm
to the chased – or
a child’s or a grandchild’s
abandonment of one
who raised her made her –
or another
unspecified female animal
of some breed or
other burrowed
deep asleep/
insentient/ oblivious after a long hard
slog through an entirely
unmarked snowfall –
– not a footprint
in sight –
& at the end a tiny tea
served solitary by
my auburn-
haired Polack grandma
in three glazed whiteware
cups & saucers
– missing one –
saved from her
girlhood – a present from Papa
incinerated in a boiler
explosion in 1910 –
& imagine
living in that doll house/ thirsting
& pining & spinning
& sooner or
later at ninety-seven & barely
breathing shrunk to a blind bald
incontinent old woman
dreaming in a child’s bed
[1] https://www.humanesociety.org/wildlifekillingcontests
Mara Adamitz Scrupe is a
visual artist, writer, and documentary filmmaker and the recipient of creative
grants and fellowships including MOZAIK Ecosystem Art Prize, National Endowment
for the Arts/CEC ArtsLink Fellowship, District of Columbia Individual
Fellowship, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship and Virginia Individual
Artist Fellowship. She is a two-time Pushcart nominee, a fellow of MacDowell
Colony and Tyrone Guthrie Centre (Ireland), and she has been awarded
residencies including the Montalvo Arts Center, Irish Museum of Modern Art
Residency Programme and USF Verftet-AiR/Bergen, Norway. Mara is the author of
six prizewinning poetry books and she has won or been shortlisted for many
international writing prizes including Welsh International Poetry Prize,
Bridport Poetry Prize (UK), National Poetry Society (UK), Aesthetica (UK), and
Pablo Neruda Prize among many others, and her poems and essays have appeared in
numerous international literary journals and magazines. She serves concurrently
as Lance Williams Resident Artist in the Arts & Sciences, University of
Kansas/ Lawrence, and Dean and Professor Emerita, School of Art, University of
the Arts, Philadelphia. Mara lives with her husband on their farm bordering the
James River in the Blue Ridge Piedmont countryside of central Virginia. www.scrupe.com
No comments:
Post a Comment