confession, declaration
Alani Hicks-Bartlett
start over again. start over again. END OF the ACT. END OF the ACT. END OF the ALL THINGS and of the SEPTENTRIONAL men who decorate the night sky, festooning the stars with their arms and diadem, with their arms and diadem!
it ALL started with the aiding end, the aiding end, the aiding end: the shadows bending, curtains closing, tree of TREES falling, a pine, or a cypress, or an oak. the long, low road buckling, folding. a millennium SWALLOWED in an instant. then the eaves began to TREMBLE, ANCIENT COW LOWING, massive cow lowing, small calf, immobile or dead. permanently dead! the most permanent of permanences!
then a whisper, a confession, the incensed vastness, the incensed eyes, percussion of hooves, the gathered TROOP of ungulate ancient mammals go shrieking now. a hand on your hand, ROUGH AND FIRM, rough and firm, brow to your brow, rough hand on your MARBLE thigh, SMOOTH AND COLD, SMOOTH AND COLD, lengthening denticles of ice above.
she said the darkness PULSED with her attendant heart, in free fall: without shutters, without blinds, without netting. GRAVITY pulled with it the free fall of complaints, hidden laments, no remorse, NO SHAME. NO SHAME, then. then, there was the list of detractions: the imperfections, admitted accountability for the FALLEN MAN’S FORM, for the FALLEN BEAST’S FORM. for the sway of the road, the sway of your twisted words. the rerouting unroutable curve of your cheek. next, next, next there was the long loneliness, the hole in the side, the long loneliness, the LONELINESS like a hole in the side. piercing. putrefaction. pullulation.
after the acceptance of faulted and faultless faults, there were the many forms of contrition:
the winnowing-fan and the suckling of goats; the cornucopia of WOODS AND MARBLE. of woods and marble. the balustrades and all the things that still keep us STANDING or ROOTED or SHELTERED in this place. the FLASH of fleshy lips from the dark mossy depths, from the darkest of depths, and from the mossiest of depths led to the careful harvesting. one plot here. one plot there. LOOK at the deeply toothed capeweed and the psychotic nightshade. LOOK at these offered offerings! these spurned, burning, and offered offerings!
LOOK, LOOK! LOOK at the lowing world! LOOK at this perverse, fungal bounty! LOOK at the DARK COWS off the twisted track. LOOK at the weird wolves and their braying! LOOK at the salt-slickened boreal backs moving over you like HEAVY trees in the dark! these logs that press you down, down, down. that pin your MARBLE side and round, solid thighs down, down. down into the muck, the silt, the sludge, the cliff that you are grateful for. HEAR the ancient song! HEAR the ancient crow! low, bedroomed world groaning, creaking, groaning. then CALM AGAIN. finally CALM AGAIN.
DRINK, DRINK! if this is your land, YOU’RE ON FIRE. if this is your path, it’s been CONSUMED. if this is your pine, it’s been splintered. your hide, it’s been FLAYED. if this is your debt, you’ve repaid it. if this is your debt, you’ve repaid it. repay it again. confiteor, confiteor, ich, ich, ich.
Alani Rosa Hicks-Bartlett is a writer and translator who lives on the East Coast, where she finds herself increasingly in a nudiustertian mode. Her recent work has appeared in The Stillwater Review, Cagibi, The Antonym, La Piccioletta Barca, The Fourth River, and Mantis, among others. In addition to her volume "the long way down to find you," she is currently working a collection of villanelles as well as translations from French, Portuguese, and Italian, and a Medieval French romance.