Tuesday, April 14, 2020

Tuesday poem #367 : Emmalea Russo : UNDERWATER CITY



the X walked into the ocean
producing a foam which was born
at the center of the underwater city

a terror overtook me
both the golden bowl and sweet
silver cord severed smashed

perhaps or something even
darker distilled knowledge
of psychic groove forgave

us this shake i must pull my
self into a tight wad and shake
until the cord unhands me or

until someone arrives shaking
and says hello what’s going
on snaps me back loosening tremble

and lost forward still the year
was gone trotting forward in
collections of books higher

level wellnesses and edibles
taken with every member of
my immediate family under

the table under the gloss of
photogenic skies blondes in
droves came to my aid with

the sun and under heaven do
not think about above not
quite yet for the sliver of

self left winnowing in the world
must first traverse its many
soft lives its stupid

and virtuous problems
newly wounded and crust
addressed to the oceanic city

years of absence from any
thing remotely dependent
upon life as in the pumping

of blood from the heart out
into the rest of the body the
most delicious journey

the book was about “reality”
horse of the king every promise
of angel or healer each passage

ever read by Walter Benjamin or
Mary Reufle each item in the fridge
that i labelled mine each hallucination

drawered and swept each driver of mad
ness and heliacal centers “material world”
is not all bad nor is it nor is it nor is it

so too begin the loosening of the spinal
cord by the fishes who wanted
hallucinatory and collective swims

feel the body come loose beginning with
the sponge of the spinal cord sopping
in ocean water and getting saltier

and energized at the golden hands of the lion
for what enclosure of central nervous
system be of fist and passing of thoracic

which rave-up the fluid container
for our hypoglossal thirty face
surgical removal of everything requiring

land-oxygen
any earthly fluid any copper
pipe faucet or splash the function

was autonomic and automatic bone
resulting in relief the angels spoke
directly to my brain which as they

said was insulted and damaged
the repairs came in red glitzes
of semi-lightning deep magnetic

pain of release and then a cavernous
sleep no one exactly believed
me but how could i blame them

as up until a few hours prior
i had not believed that angels
could perform surgery of silver

cord and spinal golden bowl
and reparation with singing
and vibratory nuances from

the archive in the sky streaming
into my fluid releasing any need
for a nervous system for any

cord or delete the whole system
was wet with the terror of carrying
a message of such pelagic tenor



Emmalea Russo’s books are G (Futurepoem) and Wave Archive (Book*hug). She was a writer in residence at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the 18th Street Arts Center, and a visiting writer at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and Parsons School of Design. Recent writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Artcritical, BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail, Cosmopolitan, Hyperallergic, Los Angeles Review of Books, and SF MOMA's OPEN SPACE. She is a practicing astrologer and sees clients, writes, and podcasts on astrology and art at the Avant-Galaxy

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

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