<< Issue 33
John Kinsella
Liquid Flow of Echidna from Gravel to Grass Bank — Reflecting Stan Brakhage’s The Dante Quartet (1987) While Painting Eye-Images
for Russ
To roll and sway and merge
is to paint the path and deny
the tracks of pursuit, to crack
paint of script and rise and part,
push aside marbling and viscosity
of dry and wet, to roll uphill
to sway an orthography a writing
of blur and merge: qualities
of sky and mouse-excavated
tailings to nose into sense for
termites deeper than old tunnels
the awakening season for flame
to a-priori its ways into traces
of aquifer-augmentation — yes, beneath
hillside eroded; what reptiles
crossed in ascent or insects
with pre-fossil wings, pause
and sample, test and surge
a quartet out of crescent
of declining sun dazzle
in shadow of spines or spikes
or inverted feathers — inside to fly
bodily further in from the body
of valley while remaining so grounded, levitating
despite ‘poor eyesight’ — such misnomers of biology,
such occlusions of echidna-speak
as close to ground they absorb and muffle
our vibrations of passing or breathing hard:
shock-absorber psyches framed by
frames of universalised structures of art-speak,
skincells, hair follicles, applique and palette frescoes
of crossing over, of circumventing a branch,
of refreshing trails laid over a range
of terrains so specific you read
‘only’ into the allegories
the metaphors of consequence
for life overlaying their space — add quick light,
add flicker or flash, texture
to hair root and shadow enfilade
cosmos singing interior
breaking of forms and refolding
to draw into a surface a logography
of constituents for all-time,
shared prognosis, differing
signatures and tellings,
ends of lines.
John Kinsella’s recent books of poetry include Insomnia (Picador, 2019/Norton, 2020), Brimstone: a book of villanelles (Arc, 2020) and Aftering Delmore Schwartz’s A Season in Hell [Rimbaud] Translation (Equipage, 2021). Recent critical titles include Beyond Ambiguity: tracing literary sites of activism (Manchester University Press, 2021) and Legibility: an anti-fascist poetics (Palgrave, 2022).