stri·gose

 

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stri·gose  (ˈstrīˌgōs),  adj.  [Mod. L. strigosus  <  L.  striga,  a furrow],  1.  in botany, having stiff hairs or bristles, as some leaves.  2.  in zoology, having fine, close-set grooves or streaks. 3. finely grooved or furrowed.

 

 

This woman makes nests.
She said: Imagine an impossible book and body as they realize themselves.
She said: my mouth: a living altar space, a living nest.
This woman makes nests out of earth and fills them with words.
She said: I am interested in the muscle memory of the book, the logic stored beneath the sentence.
This woman makes nests that are no longer a part of the book but inseparable from the book.
She said: vessels, chambers, a gathering of something.
She said: Please climb with me into under the sentence.

 

This woman weaves threads.
She said: I’m working with time, with the moment, with breath, with song, with the thread.
This woman weaves threads through people.
She said: There were no people—everyone was inside. So I was weaving saguaros and lizards.
This woman weaves threads through people and earth and the spaces she moves within.
She said: What is aggressive about a thread lying on the floor?
This woman weaves threads of storysong, songstory into now.
She said: A song a woman sings from hurt is called a pulling…How can I respond except crying in a tone no one cares for?

 

This woman arranged a courtship.
She said: P and S are pushing at the edge of their relationship.
This woman arranged a courtship, one between the page and the screen.
She said: They share text’s fleshy network.
This woman arranged a courtship, affirming each party in what they had to offer.
She said: Pale, pole, pawl have the same root as page.
This woman arranged a courtship: one of the pair she held up to be seen, the other she sent spinning in motion.

 

This woman layered a landscape.
She said: So we are all caught hanging: the rope inside us, the tree inside us.
This woman layered a landscape of word and image.
She said: The hearts of my brothers are broken.
This woman layered a landscape in black and white and then blue and green and red.
She said: And you are not the guy but you fit the description. And there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description.
This woman layered a landscape, opaque and reflecting.
She said: It was a place to begin to look at what is seen and at perception. It’s deeper than the image and yet it is the image.

 

These women ask the body.
She said: If a woman in a forest recalls a woman in bed.
These women ask the body to remember, to recall, to reiterate.
She said: If a woman in bed recalls a woman driving.
These women ask the body and the body answers in a curved spine, in sitting upright, in staring out, in.
Shes said:
Are you cooking?
Are you driving?
Are you in the car?
Are you on the phone?
On where writing begins, she said: The jaw. There’s a kind of will in the jaw: it has to do with desire, maybe it has to do with speech and a desire to say something.
She said: It begins in the space in the spine, reflexive knowledge.
 

 

Author Note: I wrote this reflection over the course of attending the Poetry Off The Page Symposium at the University of Arizona Poetry Center. The women, in order of appearance, are: Danielle Vogel, Cecilia Vicuña, Amaranth Borsuk, Claudia Rankine, Julie Carr & K.J. Holmes.