Bernett | Qwerty

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Paula Bernett

MEMORY CONSUMED SO IT WAS NEVER

Scraps and mashups hover:

kited above,

thermaled against the pour-down, against

the fit of frame.

The frame wants filling with red/blue to purple,

but a pinhole leak to black plugs the way, diverts all aspirants

to the scrub-out—

my gloved hands, dull blade, flensings.

A chink of I was and waft of indelible scent wedge among the shearings:

memory ragged and boned,

the body used up.

Packed above the water-line,

loot and salvage plow toward home,

becalming in an hour

punctured by loss

and draining in slowest time.

QUILL AND BROOD

Spied through the pinhole pierced by quill, a laser

scythes through the meadows of my mind, chasing down brood:

Now thinning and hunching among the stubble,

slathering its black cheeks with whiteface and silence.

Now stringing runway lights around its body,

threading prayer-shards and cat eyes on fishing line.

Quill whittles itself to shank.

Lays my creed open from Object to Verb to I.

Required, this ritual of subsuming:

Quill cedes its lexicon and barb to brood.

Brood dissolves quill in the ink of absolution.

Quill

About the Writer

Drawing inspiration from a range of psychological landscapes, my work reflects a deep curiosity about the mind’s forays into language and association as the drivers for a rich and dimensional life.

My poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Clackamas Literary Review, The Louisville Review, Margie, Nimrod International Journal, Rattle, Tar River Poetry, and, Whiskey Island, among others. My lyric essay "Digression and Memory, The Handmaiden Effect" and a companion essay "Four Hands Improvising on a Piano" appeared in Fourth Genre. My lyric essay "The Smallest Leaning Begins …" has been accepted by Eastern Iowa Review.