He Eats Earth, and: The Pasture to the Cornerstone
- He Eats Earth, and: The Pasture to the Cornerstone
He Eats Earth
Our ground births paradise, an expanseof solid foulness. Christ-fodder.For his manger it heaves up thorny bracelets,all life's parts—barenness, debts, borders,hungers, tortures, plagues, prisons. Its burdenso revealed, earth's art is a face-torch for him as he feeds. In partaking, hebecomes a new fashion—nose lynchedfrom eyes, skin a cardigan for bones,teeth, lace, chin beyond lips' orbit. He eats,eats earth and all this fullness. He finds the sun sick. Sore,it woos thaws, woos glitter from our rivers,trawls for storms. And, sun-like, consciencebridles, bays at virtue. And soil preaches spoilto its dining landlord. But he insists. Architectin marbles, he still espies—in laws, faults,flames, frights, bloods—hisdomain. He sees, latent in such substrate,a place as much glass, checkered cement,parks, courts, as the dust that sweepsour windows. Crazy whips his courage,and, blot or burn, he feasts on our flyaway orange,our cities, on woes' boxes, on ink-smears, spies, on sin.He constructs his elixir for distress in rose anda new linen sun balled from grave-clothes. He claws stone. He stays,still eating, still building with tinctureof barn, of rawflesh rushed from ragged Heaven. [End Page 176]
The Pasture to the Cornerstone
After Traci Brimhall
Say the sheep are oars. Say this path vitiates myshuffle to a dome where I alone am every pendentive.
Say this old field is a river knotted by many blanched framesfloating over its dells. I help these clouds delude
the horizon, and the hills rejoice. They lend me lightertusks for a tholobate, for the pools where sheep flow
to feast and water glides like wine. In a corner, I cementan imitation of current into wool and stone.
Say my head is an unquiet road, singular.Say the steel plate over the hole rattles under their hooves.
And yes, the rhythm trains me so I canunreel my plumb-bob. Cornerstone already here.
Say these sheep are narrow minerals plowinghis vineyard to unstick their tongues. Say they are
hovering corpuscles. A blood strives in me that is notmine. Sheep, field's gilding, clang
under the sun's hammer. The stone in my handbecomes a keystone I lower onto my tongue and eat. [End Page 177]
Evelyn Reynolds, raised in Oklahoma, earned her MFA in poetry from Indiana University, where she is completing a PhD in medieval English literature. Her work explores intersections among faith, nature, and suffering. Her work has also appeared in Eborakon and Midwest Review.
