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Write On Magazine's Featured Poet


Marc Awodey

Poet from Burlington, Vermont

 

Embarkation
By Marc Awodey

Reembarked toward no particular locus; trestles, ties, and open deltas undulate in seasons. Emancipated loam on eroded hillocks, is awake for the entrance of burrowing forms. Strips of greedy worm headless, mindless in witless participation aerate substrata. Foothills trammel successive epochs, to hunch over threadbare meadows marked by cairns, miserly shrubs, and small game. Granite mountains ooze blue springs frozen into odd shapes, freshened by renewed dark ribbons that trace quivering lines below naked terraces of ledge. Animal and plant form a sorority of soil tiers where sovereign mortality lives in all spheres. © 1996 copyright Marc Awodey

The Poet's Morning
By Marc Awodey

Morning is knotted into stone tracery again and upon this long count of living and dying daylight ushers rags of warming wind over flattened grasses gone yellow, gone brown, once green. The moon sleeps beside illusive stars away in the curvaceous crib of a variegated west. Finches chatter like bowl backed mandolins in groups of two and three, yet unseen on branches as daylight ushers rags of warming wind. Around the clapboards and plaster walls of my house autumn reins an empty eyed Sun, as between the quivers of a few attached leaves finches chatter like bowl backed mandolins or some other staccato voiced instrument. Every noun echoes as one of many while the most preferential nouns are usually misplaced, when autumn reins an empty eyed Sun over cascading empires of forgotten names. 2. In my side yard garden orchids thrive, Some are lavender some are white like fresh pearls; the captive sun smiles on fruitful lives but the fruit of flowers is only useless color. Wretched vines constrict garden gate who can whisper the shibboleth that is thier name? Finches' tiny beaks are sharp as knives thier shrill notes pierce warm days with ease. The senile sun smiles on fruitful lives and the fruit of song birds is inarticulate flight. When daylight falls beyond prying witness, night's apostrophe is addressed to the ears of bats and finches' beaks glint sharp as knives secreted under the wooden fingers of woven nests no one living may see jade stars progress in flocks of self-absorbed constellations. When daylight falls beyond prying witness this world becomes a mighty onyx beyond the mind. Untold miles of cloud engulf tall sky riddled with cruel hints about unknowable things no one living may see jade stars progress. Blind yet without bat ears in our catastrophes, knowing that by a blind moon is heaven blessed understanding that she is as blind as is our own dust. Untold miles of cloud engulf tall sky. 3. Every night we imitate the blindness of death, as wretched vines constrict garden gate without minding the inconveniences of day and night knowing that by a blind moon is heaven blessed. Forgetful, as planets reconnoiter its automatic dawn; the sun appears to smile on fruitful lives. Each name is of so narrow a consequence under ten thousand languages rich with names every noun echoes as one of many the remembered, the lost, the forgotten, and the almost forgotten words will again fade as breaths have done in faltering pools of burning paper, and last words. Each name is of so narrow a consequence, that on this morning, in the hues of a fruitful west the moon sleeps beside illusive stars. She does not talk coherently in her gathered sleep, in words bound to fade as living breaths have done, morning's fall must be patiently endured, yet here morning is knotted into stone tracery again. © 1996 copyright Marc Awodey

Hero Rhapsody
By Marc Awodey

Heroes process in silent rows wearing faces grooved into masks. Etched inside a timeworn intaglio is an unconscious V that is visceral. Beneath tin armed clock martinets manque figurines pirouette each half hour as clockwork ticks grow to be as long as the hammers on the harp of a grand piano. Etched inside a timeworn intaglio are dotted paper rolls where voices are preserved. Eyes fail on the face of ambitions ill-suited to untangle what is real from who is not. Clockwork ticks and tocks grow, under corrugated rooftops eigth-notes beat home into a suburb of rapt Perdition. Unable to hear over rain, unable to read the staff; eyes fail on the face of ambition driven to desperation by the practiced suffering of bejeweled prima donnas. Sanity stinks like formaldehyde poured through the saxophone shaped plumbing of a funeral home in the suburbs of Perdition. There is no jubilee left in faith or syncopation. Sanity stinks like formaldehyde when pinned down to be analyzed as if it were a work of art. Beneath tin armed clock martinets wearing faces grooved into masks; on the checkered floor tiles of major American cities on a million unrolled scrolls of perforated rhapsodies, heroes process in silent rows. © 1996 copyright Marc Awodey

The Six Seasons
By Marc Awodey

Processing ghosts found a way home by themselves, Anubis, or other myths into caverns of onyx and anthracite. They witnessed with expansive eyes; in cradle of spring yellow shoots arose, twixt summer and spring were woven nests in summer a chlorophyll canopy closed mid summer and autumn warm water condensed in caverns of onyx and anthracite. On faces that stand before shadows fall, lanterns for the dead raise without light almost undecipherable words and years. In summer a chlorophyll canopy closed to conceal villages of old dialect, silent yards measuring ruinous night and places where neighbors never more speak. Lanterns for the dead raise without light fences protecting amnesia. Autumn leaves fell like a wing from grace to mingle with newspaper, books, and grass in silent yards measuring ruinous night. Summer beyond summer is a precious curse. In winter's mean charge the whole world froze in autumn leaves fell like a wing from grace of cradle of spring yellow shoots arose in winter's mean charge the whole world froze while in seasons of humble senselessness processing ghosts found a way home. © 1996 copyright Marc Awodey

 

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About the poet. . .

Marc Awodey of Burlington, Vermont is a former instructor at Burlington College, who is now a full time poet. M.F.A. Cranbrook Academy of Art. His poetry has been selected by many print and electronic publications including; Humanitas, Writers Journal, Zuzu's Petals Quarterly online, Recursive Angel, Anthem, Poetry Motel, Thoth, Ygdrasil, Lexicon, Tight, Defined Providence, Illya's Honey, The Portland Review, Midwest PoetryReview, Southern Ocean Review, Glossolalia, and many others.

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