Winter by Lake Angela and Georg Amsel
Image by PN art intern Danielle White, @yourdanidoodles.
Associate editor Sally Geiger on today’s bonus poem: In “Winter,” life itself is a series of double-edged swords. Language constrains, but also offers a continuity that we can reach back toward. The snow is crystalline, but clouds the night sky of its constellations. Winter marvels in the bleak beauty of the paradox.
Winter
Upon closer inspection, the snow is composed of crystal. For a moment, the faults in the snow create two glittering eyes. The snow spares time, preserves vision blue, buys the moon her halo and her coffin. Places pass by in the wind. Bird laughter drops like seeds, a bit of bread. A metal chair sits alone midfield. The man and woman emerge from cardboard boxes and saw at the bread with skill and a rusted knife. It is not true what they say; no one needs a child to survive. The choir stampedes the open field without a clock or bells. They all just stand, seeking their stars, open-mouthed to the sky. For any matter of time, they gape in grey, pouring out grey. They want to swallow the raw news. The newborn savior lies wrapped in newspaper, the day’s events sticking against his pink skin. There was no other way to arrive. Only the swallows sing. They come, bearing beaks and gifts sharper than the knife.
This poem derives from a collection tentatively called A Silken Net of Stars and Lice conceived in German and transcribed in English by Georg Amsel and Lake Angela, poets who are parts of the same system or body. These collaborations seek to invoke the transformative languages of color and movement and to animate ideas that cross decades and continents, especially as Amsel's verbal idiom is an Austrian German from the late 1800s. Angela holds a PhD in intersemiotic poetry and dance, and her books include Organblooms and Words for the Dead (FutureCycle Press). Visit www.lakeangeladance.com.
