Issue 23: Adam Flint

Snows of a Mother’s Face

            “So, is your mother a landscape

                  or a face?”

                        ~ G. Deleuze & F. Guattari,

                                    A Thousand Plateaus

I

                      or landscape

if so, swidden

         but snows of a mother’s face

                         bright as bible tripe

                         cicatrix

                         dove-shit over the ashlar

even litvit-skinned that

bright that

fictive    

II

white cuts distance

ushers limit               hems

the pestering light

in countless falls

sees the bitten leaf-raft eke a course

across dim nursery water

                     down sagittarian silver street

mid north

moon before yule

enfield arms bearing

an eagle-shanked and taloned wolf

                     sinister

back-foot

fleck-head

to the dexter

III

strange benison this winter

transmittance through layers of waking

                  hidden tiers

                  some ascend

too pure to fall

though in droves they do so and no sully

IV

celt-white

caught on fencerows

thistledown mimics

bits of fleece

drifts of face

traces

concealed by broken nurture

V

deepen bright obliterator

distance softens

a little nearer

and the teeth wheel tine-light

points to angelic pinions

jagged and atomic

disjecta

VI

begin small

frost-sane

on a path through the common

               hearken        in glade-womb

               thee encrystalled spells remain

VII

the clear strain

seen through prints

negatives

yet developed

runs down the years

a willed relation

as through root of fern abides

the oblique redeemer

VIII

moth-furtive

bat glass

entreat the fond aperture

beyond

                 in drink

                 in candlelight

some are ghosts of

                    babies of

                    bastardy

hard the ancient judgements die

others come from caves with snow and crying

IX

as secrets whispered

                                                      the trees

                         distances mist

and provide with brighter irroration

where the same begin to darken darken

the winds

hanging nine nights as one

looking down into one

self at one

self

until as of old haunters

galloping over whimpers

the fontless torrent's charge is heard

X

fall in gentle ministrance

then as flurried maul

crispen bright the sloping stars

sharp as shroud-folds cold to touch

sting-flake whiter nettle

XI

crave an empty space to play burial

at night

in gaps in snow

the blacks and depths

asymmetric

crystals permit

pain as far as the threshold

XII

mirrors encrypt the darkness

some deciphered light

rises to the surface

breaks as glitter

assembles a shine

to walk out into silent woods

its shyness to bathe

denied by the summoned mother's gaze

the shunned light

darkening through elm to dark on alder

reminds that greater roots have withered

beneath these trees

XIII

teach one that when presence breaks

absence

completes

Adam Flint was born in North London and is currently based in Potsdam, Germany. Recent poems can be found in Poetry Salzburg Review, Shearsman magazine, and Reliquiae journal from Corbel Stone Press - including their Contemporary Poetry series.

Copyright © 2019 by Adam Flint, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.

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