Snag In A Slow Run by Léni Paquet-Morante
Lines Written In An Abandonded Cathedral By The Sea
1.
You are older than you ever imagined—
there is no song to sing you to sleep.
2.
All day long, I have circled the cemetery,
have caressed the granite walls,
and drowned in her memory.
3.
There was an ocean and a wave,
and then nothing.
4.
Finally, I saw the sky
for the first time,
and knew I was home.
5.
In the red of red,
in the blue of blue,
you will not find God here.
6.
There is so little to dying,
it’s a wonder we bother at all.
7.
I have seen stone and fish
fall from the sky,
when the night was quiet
as moth wings.
8.
Nothing can frighten us more
than chancing to see our face
in the mirror by moonlight.
9.
Think of nothing
but the large birds
feeding on the shore.
After The Wine Drunk
for Phyllis Marie Nobles
All things make you sad.
The orange light
on the horizon,
the black stone
underfoot,
the crosses on the hilltop,
the September wind blowing
against the granite tombs.
The broken gate in the photograph
is only where you were,
no longer is green
a destiny for you.
Lucidity of all things is haunting you.
The pines seem taller than they were —
the ochre in the sky seems painted.
You follow women into a night
of pure oblivion.
Transgression loses
its meaning in dirty light.
You succumb to all things at once,
as a bat leaving its cave
surrenders to the sky.
Gravity never seemed so
suffocating
or the dark woods
so dangerous.
A coldness moves up your chest
and your mind begins to ache.
You see the meaning in all things.
Everywhere an image
brighter than before,
the pigeons keep falling
into dark fields
then rising up again
into the emerald light.
To One Only Too Far
In the end, your eyes will have no meaning.
And your arms, well, they have never mattered.
And the hair, yes, well, the hair is still a mystery.
Summer will soon fade away
and winter will be your only home.
Soon you will be forgotten,
and by many more than me.
The brown thrush and purple martins
will fly over you in the tall grass.
Yes, yes, the stars do look down,
and the incessant dawns
never promised a thing, darling,
yes, every word ever uttered
from your purple mouth
will come back to haunt you.
More
We came so close, darling,
the night was thick
with wind and death.
We touched each other in the darkness,
our only brother and friend.
Someone called us from a great distance,
yet no one knew where we were—
hoping, always hoping to never touch earth again.
All night long we chased each other through the graves,
and collapsed on the hill and forgot our names.
We found ourselves in the darkness, the sun
coming splintered our love into pieces.
Evening Girl
Stars eat your body and the wind makes you cold.
I see her walking at the edge of the field,
another footstep and she’ll be gone,
absorbed by trees and sky.
A voice calls from a great distance.
The pines stand still in a purple silence,
as if the world awaited their
whispers in order to go on.
She walks back across the plain.
Twilight bats and swifts fill the sky.
She stumbles along the way,
stunned by what she saw on the horizon.
About the author:
Louis Bourgeois was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is primarily a poet, but he has published translations, fiction, memoirs, poetry and interviews in over two hundred magazines and journals in North America, Europe and Asia. He graduated from Louisiana State University with a BA in English and was the first graduate of The University of Mississippi’s MFA program in Creative Writing. He is the Executive Director of VOX PRESS, as well as the Program Director for the Mississippi Prison Writes Initiative.
In the artist’s words:
Léni Paquet-Morante is a New Jersey based painter and sculptor. She has a BFA in Painting from Mason Gross School of Art and studied sculpture at Johnson Atelier Technical School of Sculpture. Léni has exhibited in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York since 1984. Solo shows include Johnson & Johnson Corporate Headquarters, Princeton University, Mercer County Community College, and Passaic County Community College. She is listed in the Women Artists of America National Directory and is registered with the Canada Arts Council. Léni was awarded a Maryland State Arts Council Artists-in-Education Residency Grant in 1986; the Lacawac Field Sanctuary AIR in 2017; and a Diderot Grant for the Chateau d’Orquevaux AIR in 2019. Her work can be found in private, institutional, and public collections internationally.