The Words That Fell To Earth - Amelia Walker

The Words That Fell To Earth

Thirty seven pages.
Thirty seven miles.
The diary of Ilan Ramon,
Israel's first astronaut,
found, wet and crumpled,
in a field just outside Palestine,
Texas. Words:
scrawled survivors,
the only survivors of Columbia,
the space shuttle that disintegrated
upon re-entry, February 1st, 2003
- the newspaper says.

Disintegrated.
Such a newspaper word.
Distintegrated.
All that metal.
All that flesh
and blood and bones and organs
and thoughts -what thoughts?
Any?
Where did they go?

How is it ink and paper escaped
the explosion, the heat,
the ice cold plummet,
the dirt and damp of the field
to be found, two months later
and returned to Ilan's wife?

All that ink.
All that paper.
All that metal.
All that flesh.
Thirty seven pages
and how many words?

Amelia Walker
http://www.freewebs.com/ameliawalker/

In Translation - Amelia Walker

In Translation

This language is a borrowed dress
I put on,
but never truly wear.

It is functional enough:
hides what must be hidden,
enables me to blend into streets and supermarket aisles.
Still I know -perhaps others can tell-
it is not mine.

It hangs baggily in some places,
affords no movement in others;
is patched mismatching colours -legacy
of countless past wearers.
It has been taken in,
taken out, torn and soiled,
sewn up and let down.
No matter how much I wash it
the fabric is flavoured with moments that are not mine:
spilled drinks and cigarettes,
perfume and sweat,
a million mixed meanings,
minefields for misinterpretation.

Still I walk around, wrapped in this language:
foreign as it is, I know no other.

Secretly, though, I pick at its frays,
trying to imagine what could be
if this language and I were to unravel
into nakedness,
into silence.
Without words there are no rule books,
without words there are no lies.

Amelia Walker

(first appeared in The Mollusca Chain)

http://www.freewebs.com/ameliawalker/index.htm

You and Me and Dora Maar - Amelia Walker

You and Me and Dora Maar

You wear red shoes to the Picasso exhibition.
I keep reminding myself, Look at the art...

Picasso never smiles in photographs
(appropriate for somebody so famous, so dead)
so many photographs -Dora's photographs-
this is her exhibition too.

Placards on the wall explain how they met
in a cafe: how she splayed one hand
on the table, and with the other danced a knife
round the crevices between gloved fingers
-a rabid, messy polka.
Picasso watched her stab and miss
and keep stabbing as her blood spilled and shone
-winking garnets, unflinching flesh -
he asked to keep the glove.

He painted her as a minotaur,
he painted her as a bird.
In a rare snap he catches her -Dora- off-guard:
small body, dark eyes staring into space,
she looks sad, she looks shy,
looks like half the girls who catch my train
-the cafe story just doesn't seem possible.
Then I see you, spinning on the heels
of your winking red shoes,
-suddenly anything is possible.

You are Dora Maar the Minotaur -strong,
sleek, shining creature of mystery and terror.
I am Dora Maar the bird -flightless, losing
myself in your labyrinth, wanting
yet afraid of you -ferocious you,
legendary you, mythological, unknown
you (and me?) and Dora Maar,
two women, three women, a million
funhouse mirror / images,
kaleidoscope wormholes and dancing knives.

~

I am Dora Maar the Minotaur
-savage, sweaty, lost
in my own maze.
I am invented, outdated, a legend, a lie,
slain and sliced up and squealing
at the sky where you,
you are Dora Maar with wings spread.
Dora Maar the bird,
circling above me, singing,
weightless, wondrous, out of reach.

You are painted blue but laughing,
rebuilding Guernica as a shiny silver egg.
You are dipping, diving, darting close
and far away (a brush of fabric, almost lock eyes...)
We are two women, so many women,
dancing careful art conversation
-proper as a white glove, polished as a knife.

Amelia Walker
(first published in Arabesques)

http://poetryandpoeticscentre.com/index.php/Interview_with_Amelia_Walker