Matina STAMATAKIS









Creation

You acrospire six days
of interwoven dreams:

Second day:

from plumule; a thousand star thistles
of sky, earthen pressures
of coiling curl [born of leaf twine].

Third day:

fireflies with pomp beat-
flap broken wings,

bleed out fleshy annulus--
full-bellied orbs.

Sixth day:

soothes you
to stand still,

tender these body-
compulsive gods

 






Shortcomings



It's dark gray but you show tonight--skin black
spirit of time sometimes
replaces embers, charred cuticles,
to recollect a day where auburn light once rested.

I found you crouched behind the fan ferns,
and lean-tos, and it.

Always it which rested heavy in my palm
and refused to grow--how seedling
looks as a virgin: small, barren, incomplete--
it.

It which destroys hopes budding,
and feeds morning chances of rebirth

with vice.

 






Tantalus: Root & Bough


 
with sap crystals
the people's ambrosia
a feast of touch & offering

you give of your body
so much so quickly
it's hard to recognize
the small & unobtainable
parts--the brief

& mortal
temptations



 *



this evening will have us
fancying stars

with lowest branches far
beyond our reach

& the dew on every morning
plum will not curve the way
we were told to believe
a heavy fruit should curve--

as the law of physics
allows

 


 


 





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