Aftermath by Cyndi MacMillan

After the Rain by Arkhip Kuindzhi, 1879.

 
Aftermath
 
                  “Art is vice. You don't wed it, you rape it.”
                                                               Edgar Degas
 
 
Was I ever so green, some fluorescing
sprig trusting the violence
was finally over,
 
even while its threat lingered,
even while purpled gallows hovered
a breath above abraded  planes.
 
Home was an invention
in the horizon, a mazy history
divided, always divided,
 
by contrasts, the warring nature
of elements. Is it any wonder
that I naively granted  
 
an unclear cleaving,
like clouds spreading or thighs parting
when they’d only sought direction.
 
Damn his oiled water.
I can barely look. Light recasts chasms
with deceitful romanticism;
 
Was I ever so invisible,
insignificant, a snowy pebble cloaked
by too explicit a dark.
 
We are all no more
than cherry-picked landscapes,
marked panoramas, manipulated
 
compositions, views bludgeoned
by epic cycles: break and heal,
heal to again be broken.

Cyndi MacMillan

This poem was written as part of the 20 Poem Challenge.

Cyndi MacMillan poetry has recently appeared in Grain Magazine and the Fieldstone Review.  Her verse, short fiction and novel-in-progress resentfully compete for her attention.  She lives in New Hamburg, Ontario, home to North America’s largest working water wheel. Coffee and family allow ideas to percolate.