LOWERCASE D
︎︎︎ Rory Sinacola
︎ DEC 28, 2021
I.
First of all:
the ‘d’ doesn't stand for drugs.
It stands for a bald head crushed
between two pillars –
white and marble –
which have grown soft, returned to sediment.
They will freeze again,
brown and red and white,
crusting over
a paroxysm we don’t talk about.
All inputs are entwined within
a five-pointed conduit;
a locus deigning to explain.
Not only hearing, seeing, feeling –
not only tasting, but perceiving
its cycle of signifiers:
stalk, yellow, brown;
stick, twig, armature;
skeleton, bone, paper;
skin, decline, settle.
The kaleidoscope turns,
tunes, and takes
an electric step down red halls.
It loops,
drawing a forensic line to the source.
It lays
taut against the seizing fingers.
It effects
ignition from nothing.
II.
In the artificial morning,
a light diffused
through paper windows, and haloed
around the head of a dead scientist
who bade me fill my belly.
He enforced the edict with heavy accessories
on ring fingers, pinky fingers,
aids in fist fights with
voyeurs
whose cigarettes —
complete strangers —
quivered on a lip
above a bin of explosives.
Then a ligature snakes a white column –
no longer marble but sweet, vinegared rice –
pressing loops and spiraling out,
fracturing and molding over,
spurting ink from a minuscule nib.
Feathers tickle,
roots form,
ice lattices,
turning primary colors,
firing and expiring
into static black.
Then –
the telltale click and snap,
the metal whisper,
the shifting of a dead mother’s back.
Drooping, I spy a sliver of pale gold,
meeting it with ranks of pearls and silver,
hurling them against sheaves of silk
while I smother a silhouette
in corduroy, houndstooth, and tweed.
The crude skirmish ends –
but still measured are the weighty silver fruits
that brush my crown and offer faint praise.
I feel pacified;
I see a mouth agape, and teething, throatless –
I taste the breath of realization,
I hear vulgar, rapid noises.
III.
In the end,
I found a place where
tenderness and violence achieve
harmonic resonance.
They vibrate until they become
an intolerable mess of
ashes and cake,
given blunt form as fingers trailing
across a manifold,
wet and warm.
The simulation lingers, failing
even in stranglehold
to render its form:
a fleshy analogue turned inside out.
Instead it is smoke and artifice,
a poke at a ruddy orifice
at the beck of a humorless monolith
whose passion is stunted on a clumsy tongue;
whose flame is cherished and baring itself.
Why would this new player abash himself?
Perhaps he is still too young.
First of all:
the ‘d’ doesn't stand for drugs.
It stands for a bald head crushed
between two pillars –
white and marble –
which have grown soft, returned to sediment.
They will freeze again,
brown and red and white,
crusting over
a paroxysm we don’t talk about.
All inputs are entwined within
a five-pointed conduit;
a locus deigning to explain.
Not only hearing, seeing, feeling –
not only tasting, but perceiving
its cycle of signifiers:
stalk, yellow, brown;
stick, twig, armature;
skeleton, bone, paper;
skin, decline, settle.
The kaleidoscope turns,
tunes, and takes
an electric step down red halls.
It loops,
drawing a forensic line to the source.
It lays
taut against the seizing fingers.
It effects
ignition from nothing.
II.
In the artificial morning,
a light diffused
through paper windows, and haloed
around the head of a dead scientist
who bade me fill my belly.
He enforced the edict with heavy accessories
on ring fingers, pinky fingers,
aids in fist fights with
voyeurs
whose cigarettes —
complete strangers —
quivered on a lip
above a bin of explosives.
Then a ligature snakes a white column –
no longer marble but sweet, vinegared rice –
pressing loops and spiraling out,
fracturing and molding over,
spurting ink from a minuscule nib.
Feathers tickle,
roots form,
ice lattices,
turning primary colors,
firing and expiring
into static black.
Then –
the telltale click and snap,
the metal whisper,
the shifting of a dead mother’s back.
Drooping, I spy a sliver of pale gold,
meeting it with ranks of pearls and silver,
hurling them against sheaves of silk
while I smother a silhouette
in corduroy, houndstooth, and tweed.
The crude skirmish ends –
but still measured are the weighty silver fruits
that brush my crown and offer faint praise.
I feel pacified;
I see a mouth agape, and teething, throatless –
I taste the breath of realization,
I hear vulgar, rapid noises.
III.
In the end,
I found a place where
tenderness and violence achieve
harmonic resonance.
They vibrate until they become
an intolerable mess of
ashes and cake,
given blunt form as fingers trailing
across a manifold,
wet and warm.
The simulation lingers, failing
even in stranglehold
to render its form:
a fleshy analogue turned inside out.
Instead it is smoke and artifice,
a poke at a ruddy orifice
at the beck of a humorless monolith
whose passion is stunted on a clumsy tongue;
whose flame is cherished and baring itself.
Why would this new player abash himself?
Perhaps he is still too young.
Rory Sinacola lives in the Northwest of America, where trees and rain keep her close to the ground. The two biggest questions on her mind are how to express love so that others accept it and if there is a singular consciousness. She believes trauma is a key that unlocks a path to revelation through great pain, and that we can learn much from the wounded.