Author: Elizabeth

elizabethweaver.wordpress.com

Día de Muertos

painting & photo by Elizabeth

THE CHOIR

I walk and I rest while the eyes of my dead
look through my own, inaudible
hosannas greet
the panorama charged serene
and almost ultraviolet with so much witness.
Holy the sea, the palpitating membrane
divided into dazzling fields and whaledark by the sun.
Holy the dark, pierced by late revelers and dawnbirds, 
the garbage truck suspended in shy light, 
the oystershell and crushed clam of the driveway, 
the dahlia pressed like lotus on its open palm.
Holy the handmade and created side by side, 
the sapphire of their marriage, 
green flies and shit in condums in the crabshell
rinsed by the buzzing tide.
Holy the light--
the poison ivy livid in its glare, 
the gypsy moths festooning the pine barrens, 
the mating monarch butterflies between the chic boutiques.
The mermaids handprint on the artificial reef. Holy the we, 
cast in the mermaid's image, smooth crotch of mystery and scale, 
inscrutable until divulged by god
and sex into its gender, every touch
a secret intercourse with angels as we walk
proffered and taken. Their great wings
batter the air, our retinas bloom silver spots like beacons.
Better than silicone or graphite flesh absorbs
the shock of the divine crash-landing.
I roll my eyes back, skylights brushed by plumage of detail, 
the unrehearsed and minuscule, the anecdotal midnight
themes of the carbon sea where we are joined: 
zinnia, tomato, garlic wreaths
crowning the compost heap.

 Olga Broumas

Día de Muertos

Explosion

EXPLOSION

Flash fiction and photo by Elizabeth

Days after the United Nations coalesced, she slivered out in almost as many pieces as she had cells. There were cells that had surrounded the embryo created before her lungs had forced its expulsion, cells that hurled with such force one could not imagine how hard they’d tried to make marriage work yet a lifetime isn’t just love and loyalty but also kismet, and sometimes everything that can go wrong lasts beyond endurance and without right. Some cells radiated forth like the kaleidoscope that made her laugh as a girl while others were sucked into dark stars, worm holes, the Horsehead Nebula…she’d always wanted to be a horse. Only two of her cells joined like team cyclists breaking wind for the other so they could reach the crescent’s pointy tip where they stayed to play with shadow and light along the impish moon thus fulfilling what she’d have chosen if not embodied. 

Thank you to the editors of Doorknobs and BodyPaint for first publishing “Explosion.”