On the Forming Substance of Orishas
1999; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 22; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/cal.1999.0067
ISSN1080-6512
Autores Tópico(s)Borges, Kipling, and Jewish Identity
ResumoOn the Forming Substance of Orishas * Will Alexander (bio) Will Alexander, Poet and Essayist: A Special Section Like spectral glass or music in hypnotic palindrome I float in measureless unus-ambo1 as if up a flight of refracted shale I had greeted my own collusion my quaking appoggiatura in morose voudanic empyreans in a darkened gradient ideal in a treatise on immortal monsoon en-storement yes on combined ammonia & sand by extracting dye from bitter surgical causes by flames monstrously modified by treason as if I threw from my optics a blizzard of dice a transformed connivance & flew spellbound into the jeopardous range of dense Judaic gods who change forms who variate as monsters as plagues as ghosts who block the sun door so my Orishas imprisoned theistically locked [End Page 386] who advance & retreat by phantom creosote vibration by prayer as aboriginal containment therefore the sun a lucid kestrel flambeau appearing in fictitious scintilla like a spector or a draught with both its ciphers missing again appearing as a blood drenched duenna as a life & death rotation as a quintessential acid & so my Orishas with the double throat of a billion ethers flying across runic withdrawal flying as obscured pariahs alive as if sulfuric bi-theism were shattered with its laws with its manacles with its phantoms & my Orishas with their sputum coloured auras with their eyes of tortured hurricane moons as flailing solitary ghats as quintessential duplicity part quadrant & part yellow & I with lustrous looking glass pigment with my roving heretical elixir & so there is thirst there are surreptitious muffling powders & the deities with their scattered wounding teeth watch my Orishas turn shadow & vanish [End Page 387] & continue to hum within my voice as in a glass of old veronal brew Now as dialectical advantage as high above deistic moral chambers their winged singular fate freed to roam inscrutable havens beyond the fact of an insular neutron thesis beyond the trait of canonic barrier as reversion Will Alexander Will Alexander is the author of six books, including Asia & Haiti, The Stratospheric Canticles, and Towards the Primeval Lightning Field. Asia & Haiti was a PEN finalist in 1996. His more recent work has been published in Orpheus Grid, XCP, Fence, Chain, and Hambone. Footnotes * From Above the Human Nerve Domain (Pavement Saw Press, 1999). Reprinted by permission of the author. 1. unus-ambo—“...a counterpart, a heavenly ‘partner’, which partakes of a ‘polar’, or ‘transcendent dimension.’” Copyright © 1999 Charles H. Rowell
Referência(s)