COLLECTING SHELLS



Ziyang collected words like shells:

                        argonaut paper nautilus combed with spiral chambers                                                                              chitons in coats-of-mail, limpet mines in amber
                        cones of deadly poison with stinging harpoons barbed
                        & fiery flaming augurs that torch giant robber crabs
                        dog whelks shooting acid, thornbacks pincers cracking
                        armour-plated marlinspikes in phalanxes attacking
& bleeding tooth nerites, maws a fiend’s trapdoor
nuclear whorls & razor shells bomb coral reefs in war


Lily Yin collected words like jewels of the deep:

                                                 queen conch

                        star turban                                    venus comb

      strawberry goblet                                                   precious wentletrap
                       
dog-cockle pearl                                                           imperial harp
        
          emerald nerite                                                      banded tulip
           
               flamingo tongue                                       golden cowrie

                                              rose-branch murex

                                                                                   

Michael Small
January 6, 1994
May 2-6, 2005

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

MEDLARS - SHE'S APPLES!

            In the rustic green garden of Catherine of Yarragon             Bobbled hundreds of frightful skulls of medlars woe-begone             Apples blackened with ague or rotting with plague on             To the wincing jaundiced quince, mug-ugly first cousin Yea, hundreds of death-masks dropping with aplomb             Like conkers, round brown faces, some bruised mauve to plum             Hollowed–out black eyes squinched neath nasal bar’s helm             Curving sepals summon knights from a distant Norman realm Mid a circuit of arthritic sticks, twiglets, thin limbs twisting r...
Read more

MORNING OVER FORT MADHOGARH

Clack, clack, clack breaks her village like beescomb, awakes the sun god, Surya.   Still treadling dark, young Hindu girl.   Dare she dream the kingfisher weave, silky azul?   Even the banyan tree stretches legs for parabolas of parakeets where peacocks mewl. And in dung-fed fields, orange saris gild mustard seeds.   After school, she buckles yet to her station.   Fluent in shuttle solely, tread imperceptible, deft.   Among stoops of elders rapt in village talk, card players hawking gustily, her father warps at gouging a wedge of droughty mud to fathom lake’s bed or burning rubbish and dead dog.   Pig’s work, eh?   Under kite’s eye, threading the brokered marriage day, his larki clacks blind duty.                                  ...
Read more

ADOLESCENT DESKAPE

crustating in class      vassal or vessel    dripfed by vultures war vets in gowns       boxed by backrest & knobbled desklid          iron stanchions stirruping lustings of legs             often id pore over that oaken scrawled slab                in veins of stephens blue black & ruby red                   Jackson Pollock   rorshached   bridget riley                      so pricked by the press of worsted weave                     ...
Read more