My Forelock to the Ground My gestures summon forces at the outermost feather of what I understand. I’m a thistle seeking salvation, complexity yearning to be elemental. I’m not sure who I invoke as my arms circle at my sides, like wings. I kneel and fold. My forelock touches the ground. I rise and do it again. Not wanting to remain singular, wounded by isolation, wishing to merge, I lurch and rumble, trundling through my years, chasing beauty with what grace I can. I lift my hand and touch the back of my neck. I don’t know, yet, the way of this container, how it came, where it goes. Each day, I leave enough room for night to pin me to my bed. In the blink of my eye, on either side of the snap of my fingers, all I see spins and flips. I’m high-desert dust coating the nostrils of a horse loose at midnight rearing up beneath a traffic light that swings in the wind. From whence this horse? This wide black-topped road? This wind? I’m the shape of clay without water. I kneel and fold. I rise and do it again. Lisa Segal Lisa Segal is a Los Angeles poet, writer, and artist. She has published two poetry and prose collections--Kicking Towards the Deep End (2020) andMetamorphosis: Who is the Maker? An Artist’s Statement (2014)—and a textbook: Jack Grapes’ Method Writing: The Brush-Up. Her work has appeared in anthologies and journals and won prizes in poetry contests. She teaches Method Writing through the Los Angeles Poets and Writers Collective and is a member of StudioEleven, a Los Angeles artist collective. Website: www.lisasegal.com. .
1 Comment
Bruce
11/16/2021 12:00:34 am
Amazing work. Efficient in words yet incredibly powerful images all through it. Beautiful
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July 2025
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