By: Stephanie Garon
Acreage
Right past Caleb’s cotton fields, dusty
White clouds turn auburn soil into candy canes.
Clifford Hubbard’s grilling shoulder,
frying hush puppies luring me their way.
I’m traversing a shuck and hull hexagon maze
Midsummer giants lurking, unfurling sage striped leaves round my waist
Forcing a do-si-do that flings
me like a fly fisherman casting line towards the horizon.
Refusing to exhale, my cadence returns
Left right
Left right
Left [ ]right
Left [ ]right
Left
Pebbles shape the road’s gully to the Lord’s river laces,
And I follow so many that my path resembles a Mondrian terrain map from above,
Ninety degree angles of compartmentalization tied pretty.
My hopscotch board catapults past contour lines,
Archival framework like Pompeii ruins,
Where ash laden figurines rest.
Sterile untouched unclaimed reclaimed
Land,
Reckoned syrup skies outrunning my words
My waist curving
Like the corner spiderweb arching in August air.
There’s the left hook of God’s elbow pointing
Home, but [ ]
And [ ] and all I see is
Acreage.
Reflection
Silver spigot reflects sweet potato pie curves
Morphed breasts that roll into marshmallow hips, no legs
Show after dried drips are wrapped terrycloth tight
Into this venetian replica poised to handle
Heat like bbq coals still simmering, intensity
That hums.
Stronger than August cicadas marking decades past, one turn
Conflates sin to cosine, just a glance
Of the eyes because
Lord knows it’s time for collard greens.
Untitled
The 1:03 a.m.
reverberation of no sound
compounded with heaving rhythms pounding
Motel Six shrug carpet – smelt burned cigarettes semen Mr. Clean
carpet
low -- begging
low
After each cough cracks silence,
Blackness seeps under the door, its heavy arms shifting
to play with the streetlamp flicker.
Bands of chiaroscuro, like a television screen gone blank, cross
the barren room with one wooden dresser, feeble bed framed
isolation like sweat between thighs,
folds my body to the floor, dizzy under gravity’s
demise.
Stephanie Garon received dual science degrees from Cornell University, then attended Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Her nature infused metal sculptures have been exhibited internationally in London, Columbia, and South Korea, as well as across the United States. Her writing, a critical aspect of her artistic process, has been published in international literary journals. She teaches at MICA to pay for pencils and steel.