Sublimation
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Sublimation is the process by which a solid becomes gas, as when one applies heat and pressure to a crystalized mass of iodine, outing its violet effluvia.
For a strand of stiff shirts it performs the same miracle. Heavy with the human shape they hang frozen to the line, but are blessed again with buoyancy in the weak white, winter sunlight.
For the psychologist, it gives name to the diversion of carnal impulse, as when a man softens pasta, lays a dinner plate for his date at the dining room table.
While sex, for you, is an act of sublimation, one which skips the crucial state between presence and the loss of the body.
“It is an act of purification, refinement,” you say. But for me, it is like paper that becomes ash without the danger or brilliance of flame. [End Page 882]
Cindy King, originally from Cleveland, Ohio, currently lives in Lancaster, Texas, and is an assistant professor of English at the University of North Texas, Dallas. Her poems have appeared in Callaloo, North American Review, L.A. Review, Barrow Street, and elsewhere.
