Art: “Amor” by Amparo Noguera
A GEOLOGY
based on First Folio! The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare,
the first collected edition of 36 Shakespeare plays.
Open under glass to Hamlet’s soliloquy,
the human heart, laid down
in graying pages, a cross-cut of time,
emotional moraine, from thermal spring
to snowline, from tide to trap—
mine tailings,
zones of fracture,
saturation—
fault cuts in which to find ourselves,
to bear those ills we have.
It’s here we dig, deep into dirt and sparkle,
centuries awakening,
until archaic speech burbles
from our mouths, confounding us
with incidence, reflection—
all our yesterdays the way
to dusty death,
that undiscovered country—
quires unfolding candle, shadow,
discontent, all of what this clay can hold.
NOTE: The First Folio was printed in “quires.” The quires were three large sheets of paper folded once, creating six pages, each printed on both sides making 12 pages of text.
About the author:
Susan Elbe is the author of The Map of What Happened, winner of the 2012 Backwaters Press Prize and the Jacar Press 2014 Julie Suk Prize for the best book of poetry published by an independent press in 2013, Eden in the Rearview Mirror (Word Poetry), Where Good Swimmers Drown (Concrete Wolf Press), and Light Made from Nothing (Parallel Press). Learn more about her at www.susanelbe.com.
Recent work has appeared in: Blackbird, diode, and North American Review.
Art:
Collagrab Series: “Amor” by Amparo Noguera, Valencia, Spain, @amparo_noguera.