Excerpts from Irene Koronas' manuscript chiaroscuros, Volume VIII of The Grammaton Series

 

Excerpts from Irene Koronas' manuscript chiaroscuros, Volume VIII of The Grammaton Series

23°

 

It quavers between

the terrapin neck

and an old cockshine

 

that caresses an object

with chiaroscuro

 

where sfumato blurs

the contour

it smudges charcoal

 

as waves secrete

the pale oblivion

 

the hallow blue

throbs with harmonics

 

roseate flesh

is shot with gray

nipples a thin brush

 

around this frenzied

vortex. The obsession

with optics

 

mappae clavicula

snips plaster

 

prepares the

transition from monk

to artisan

 

the hierarchy in trade

the ultramarines

the severe pigment

 

in spiritus

on parchment skin

 

alchemy rolls

in color innovavi

 

azurite from copper

carbonate

 

the herbs woad and indigo

ground into hot dung

for a nosehand

 

then mixed with

the foam it turns dye

into pale horses

 

turnsole or folium

from plant extract

red purple and blue

depends on the acidity

 

the rigid stretch

 

 

24°

 

Involute the clench

form and gully knots

the imbrications

in pigment

 

the sliding identity

or rapturous erotic

swarms that drench

and shuffle fantasy

 

with speed conveyance

the winglike shapes

are squiggly 

 

vulval slits

in a chancy dribble

that stains effects

 

and congests

the irresolute surface

in a jumble box

 

an anagram in paranoiac rage

the dusty residue inherited

from nanodada to a pedestal

 

for abstract ardour

the paroxysm

in the octahedron leans

toward a salivating

fishfly on a cantata

 

with the tongue tip

it dries the scab

to their rictus

 

bites the uperuman

and devours

the antiprotons

 

with an oil drop

synchronized

with a quasidope

chiaroscuros, Volume VIII of Irene Koronas' The Grammaton Series, is a hyper-minimalist écriture, melding its aporias with a mix of staccato posthumanism and the historiography of colour.

 

Irene Koronas is an extreme experimentalist. Her The Grammaton Series includes gnōstos, Volume VII (BlazeVOX, 2023), siphonic, Volume VI (BlazeVOX, 2022), lithic cornea, Volume V (BlazeVOX, 2021), holyrit, Volume IV (BlazeVOX, 2019), declivities, Volume III (BlazeVOX, 2018), ninth iota, Volume II (The Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2018) and Codify, Volume I (Éditions du Cygne, 2017). Her extreme experimentalism has been published in Alligatorzine, Argotist Online Poetry, BlazeVOX, Buzdokuz, Die Leere Mitte, E·ratio, Graphic Violence, Hyper-Annotation, International Exhibition of Surrealism Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Marsh Hawk Press Review, New Mystics, Offcourse Literary Journal, Otoliths, perspektive, #Ranger, SPAMzine, Stride, Sulfur Surrealist Jungle, Synchronized Chaos, Utsanga, Version (9) Magazine and Word For/Word. She is the Publisher of Var(2x). Her website is irenekoronas.com.