Poetic
Matrix
a periodic letteR on the poetic experience
online spring/summer 2009 letteR 7
Poems Page 4
IVANA PLUCINSKI, GRACE MARIE GRAFTON
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IVANA PLUCINSKI
Ergo Sum
Artist
Remind humanity
Show us new fables of rhythms
On irrational scales of experience
In networks of your empty mind.
Let sinners and saints converge
Image
Our fractured sensuality
Decoupled
When you are so inclined
To precess by tilted opulence
On a landscape of continuum
Without a frame of reference
Demonstrate
That creator and created are one
Amo ergo sum
By tensors of all forms
Concentrate
Make miracles be conscious
That there is no thing within itself
In your mundane mysteries
Burning
With impossible desire
To document emergence
From anywhere
Even to bleak intentions
You are dissident seed
Of complementary fruit
Taunting hidden variables
That whiteness within your face space
Disguised by four dimensions
<editor’s note: The poet adds the following remark to her poem, relating it to the
theme of The Role of the Artist in Modern Society>
This poem should not sound solipsistic; actually I wrote it in imperative voice for
that is the way how I wish to address artists.
An artist creates bridges showing, where society is vulnerable or he is the one
who creates new trends for his society. His creation makes visible what should
be changed for he is plugged to the society and the universe on another level.
His authentic visionary creation is important; this is what I say with this poem.
There is a paradox - because I am also an artist, poetess, when I create a poem,
deliberately I made use of it.
Amo - (I love) I used Latin expression to say: Amo ergo sum (I love, so I am) for
this world needs more love and altruism to make it better. The one who loves
what he is doing, he is sharing with others - this is, what artists do, we need their
authentic divine creations.
************
GRACE MARIE GRAFTON
Sewn into the sleeve
On my birthday, where would I go?
To the glassblowing factory
on River Road, under elms and
motherly maples? Sand, breath, fire.
The incarnation of Galle, held
amulet-like in my mind. Still place
that encircles idea or intent
like alchemy's crucible. To empty
moment of all but hands and heat
informed by air's direction would
build the world. We begin so small,
let us bring faith to the work,
the color of ink we have wrung
from clarity and communion applied.
**
A wave of harvesters
(for the WPA artists of the 1930's)
Color seeps into the irises of their eyes,
blessed blossoms even in dreams,
Easter eggs vivid as laughter,
no one eats those yokes, shells' shards heaped
in blue-white china bowls, displayed
for post-dinner enjoyment. Candle flames
of amber light allow purples,
greens, cobalt blues to luminesce
and replenish the appetite for life.
Baubles to hurl into the maw of want,
piece of glittering change when paper bills
run out. "Look, I have fistfuls of color,"
they display as tent cities spread
and the cold moon slips them its light.
**
Another sky
She started large, as though wing were
half the roof, inky against fire
that dazzled her hand. She only thought
how many entered her when her bones
bore up, wishes within heat. Take
the opening of air, even her youth -
summer, the immorality of it -
lifting in the rise. Where did such
permission come from? Ride without
getting into the car. Music she drank,
rain forest's red-legged frog, undulant
tones she remembered as her mother's voice.
No catastrophe, no dying
civilization to rip apart the day.
**
Medicines to revive
Shocking red hair, drugs on the kitchen counter
account for the life-study nude she paints
in contrast to the corpse on the floor. No
one's world is stable, most don't like being
reminded of it but she lets anything
in the door. Yarn ball dropped, bristling
near the cowboy boots her storyteller
sports. Not really a sporting sort,
the eyes hint of Johnny Cash or Abe
Lincoln "with malice toward none,"
but here again at the scene of the crime.
It will be the connecting thread.
I pull up a chair to sit and listen
to the way she tears the human story.
(This last poem was published in the latest issue of VOLT.)