A Body of Still Marble I. Bees here don’t know it’s January and 40 degrees, but still push their bodies onto mint stalks of germander, dipping the lavender petals, testing strength versus weight like lovers on an old wooden swing. But who am I to claim it’s too cold, that this is not the best time to harvest pollen, transfer from flower to another? Who am I to say they are forbidden from feeding themselves in winter, or that they shouldn’t gather the largest hoard of other lonely bees to huddle close, even if it means their honey storage will then deplete that much faster? II. Seagulls, where is the coast, the body of water you were once called to? You perch and hunt in the middle of this ancient city, this new feast of trash from the street fattening your kind after your exodus from the shoreline. I know the swift with its forked tail seems to be going nowhere. Its entire life is spent in flight, feeding, mating mid-air, collecting materials straight from the sky to cushion its nest, one tucked into an abandoned or unseen place: beneath a loose tile, inside a gap in the windowsill, under a building’s eave. III. The wingbeats of birds and bees, them slicing negative space in my mind, is fleeting compared to the stone- carved wings of the solitary angel of St. Andrea della Valle. One is raised as if longing for flight, but the other is folded behind her back as though she has accepted she will never leave that building’s top corner, never see the blue surf of the sea. Her hands, too, are solidified contradictions. The right shows her palm open and upturned but with fingertips beginning to close. The left arm rises up with the momentum of the outstretched wing, but her hand curves around some piece of her world that is now missing, or perhaps was never there. Her mate, too, was never made. Giacomo Antonio Fancelli was tasked in 1655 to carve two angels, but the first’s form was criticized so much, even by the Pope, that he resigned from the job. Said if he wants the other angel, let him do it alone. IV. The angel remains alone, head turned away from her missing half, her un- sculpted celestial twin, as her chin tilts down, away from the sun. Her right hand forever reaches out to bronze star she will never touch, and from that height, she cannot hide that she will never know the huddled warmth and rhythmic humming of a hoard of bees. Never know the sensation of perpetual flight, a lifetime of movement like the swift, enough to take seven round trips to the moon. Lacy Snapp Lacy Snapp is a teacher and woodworker in East Tennessee. She is a 2023 MFA in Writing graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts and holds an MA in English from East Tennessee State University. She serves on the board of the Johnson City Poets Collective and as the current Chair of Programs for the Poetry Society of Tennessee. Her first chapbook, Shadows on Wood, was published in 2021 (Finishing Line Press). Her work including poetry, interviews, reviews, and nonfiction appears in Still: The Journal, Snapdragon, Tupelo Quarterly, Appalachian Places, and multiple Women of Appalachia Project anthologies, among others, and is forthcoming in About Place Journal, Cutthroat, and Appalachian Journal.
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
The Ekphrastic Review
COOKIES/PRIVACY
This site uses cookies to deliver your best navigation experience this time and next. Continuing here means you consent to cookies. Thank you. Join us on Facebook:
November 2024
|