Claire's Cosmography, by Mary B. Moore

Untitled, by Claire Bateman (USA) contemporary

​Claire’s Cosmography 
  
The pale blue ribbon  
creates the figure, pulls her out,  
 
a night-sky-blue silhouette  
against night-sky blue ground: 
 
a forehead and two outcurves, 
cheek, nose, then a chin-angle. 
 
She bears a cloud or nebula 
where the cheekbone might lift 
 
a wing. Another streamer parallels her, 
red-striped, wavy, a sugar-cane 
 
snake that makes another woman, 
ultramarine too. 
 
The maybe hair of first woman 
flies behind both, yellow orange 
 
gold.  Does the encaustic 
technique’s heat evoke fire-hair, 
 
unburnt, behind the blue  
forewoman? 
 
But there is no jury, no common 
law. Four yellow bubbles 
 
or worlds rise through her,  
and more squiggles in red  
 
and gold like vertical 
handwriting––maybe the lore 
 
this painting imagines, women 
made of women made 
 
of night sky, a cosmology 
which doesn’t care  
 
to make common 
sense.  Perhaps the origin 
 
fires blew them, arcs, 
streamers, snakes for company. 
 
The idea of order here?  
Confetti’s spray and fall,  
 
unruly colours like the legend  
of women’s unreason, 
 
or this discipline 
that may look like none. 

Mary B. Moore

Mary B. Moore’s poetry books include Dear If, (forthcoming, Orison Books); Flicker (Dogfish Head Prize, 2016); The Book Of Snow (Cleveland State UP, 1997).  Chapbooks, both prize winners, are Amanda and the Man Soul (Emrys 2017) and Eating the Light (Sable Books 2016). Recent poems also appear in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Birmingham Poetry Review, Gettysburg Review, ekphrastic.net, Nelle, Terrain, Georgia Review, 32 Poems, The Nasty Woman Poet anthology, and more.  A retired professor, she lives in Huntington WV.