Thursday, June 12, 2014

Hibiscus


Hibiscus

The flower tumbles
I watch
She replaces it with a blade

1
Memory is a mirror
that has no face
hibiscus keeps the woman
who has lost her place

Covet the key
worn dull by habit
the pop and the stutter
of deep rutted groove

Worn dull by habit
the secreted blade
slumped back lounger
a witness, a spade.

The secreted blade
squat sodden loaf
damp strewn news,
a squandered note.   



2

Glint of desire
slipstream of dreams
distance transfigured
not what it seems

Spit slick the key
draw swift the blade
a puzzle-- a mirror
three sisters, a braid

Where shadow meets shadow
she floats the stair
lover, assassin
sandaled and rare.

Memory is a mirror
that has no face
hibiscus keeps the woman
who has lost her place.

Tags:  The Yellow Wallpaper, Picnic at Hanging Rock, eros and thanatos, strangers when we meet


At Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, Susie offers “bits of inspiration” via Maya Daren (1917-1961), filmmaker, poet, dancer, ethnographer.
Deren believed that the world of film was an untapped medium for exploring time, memory and movement.  Her groundbreaking work influenced such artists as Luis Bunuel, Jean Cocteau and David Lynch, among others.
In her seminal film, Meshes of Afternoon, Deren probes the themes of memory, identity and ritual via a woman’s subjective experience of familiar objects and domestic routine. Deren employs continued motion through discontinued space to induce a trancelike state in which the ordinary is suspended.  As the woman descends into a stuporous dream state, a vortex of raging and stifled energy emerges.  A play of repetition and variation heightens her sense—and ours –of restlessness, claustrophobia and anomie.

“And what more could I possibly ask as an artist than that your most precious visions, however rare, assume sometimes the forms of my images.”
Maya Deren

4 comments:

Susie Clevenger said...

Love how you began and ended the piece with the same verse and the use of the blade. There are so many layers in the video that are open to varied interpretations. You have captured well it's dark mood that each writer seemed to feel. Great piece! Thanks so much for writing for the challenge.

Anonymous said...

The first two lines in 1 and 2 I love. Beginning and ending with the same stanza is powerful, too.

Jim said...

Nice writing, Gabrielle. I especially like the moistened key idea and the lines, "Memory is a mirror that has no face."
..

avalon said...

I like both your contributions very much indeed. Subtle twists and turns to reflect the ways this lady was thinking about life and her art.