FOR THAT CALLED BODY IS A PORTION OF SOUL

1 1 R F O R T H A T C A L L E D B O D Y I S A P O R T I O N O F S O U L E A V A N B O L A N D On winter evenings, when she finished painting, my mother’s plain handled brushes were left soaking in a lost summer – not in distilled turpentine ready to be dipped in cadmium, alizerine, the colors of skin and drizzle but in this product of sand, product of silica: sensory transient of the process of making the dense clear, little jam jar making obvious in alliteration its origin in a hot afternoon when crab apples were pulled down from tree-tops boiled in a copper pot, poured into glass and left cooling: a scalded jewel on a pantry shelf, only to be emptied out again filled with turpentine and left to be a winter emblem of dualities: Even the crab apple is seeking 1 2 Y a sky of inferences to constellate with: the rosiness of a larger fruit, the hint of a sea creature sidling in another element. When I was expecting my second child my mother turned to me. She said Surely you don’t believe you’re two souls at this moment? ...