the opening/the departure by Linda Stryker

Pink Abstraction by Georgia O'Keeffe, 1929

the opening / the departure

The magician unveils his masterpiece:
    woman guillotined in half.
Thrill flutters through the spine,
    like the splutter of angels

emerging from an apple’s interior
    in the middle of intoxicated timberlands.
Trees stutter as their tops await
    the delicate spectacle to begin:

give up the world, keep the world
    from contaminating its sprites.
When labia open
    into an infinitesimal fissure,

angels freed into air,
    authorizes lungs, pink bellows
that keep the body’s brush fires quickened,
    colors swiftly transitioning,

like white to pink to crimson,
    the unfolding begins.
First: inaudible rumble, then,
    tiny flitter into ripple, resonant rivulet

tippling over smooth stone,
    seedlings breaking groundcover,
rose petals unfurling.
    A stirring, a hiccup, a call

to life, energy into wing veins,
    sap filling out, copied in multitudes,
color patterns release the split fruit,
    the womb, the prison.
                        
Wings quiver like aspens,
    shiver out the crack.
The apple pierced, eaten
    before the serenade drifts

to the treetops, siren melody
    ting-tinging down like echoing cymbals:
shing shing shing shing ––the winged exodus
    of micro angels seduced by the sensual cosmos.

by Linda Stryker

Linda Stryker lives in Phoenix, but sometimes in her head; her cat and piano are in there, too. 
She is a poet, teacher, radio reader, and tennis player. Her work has been appeared in several journals
and anthologies including New Millennium Writings, Highlights for Children, ditch poetry, The Speculative
Edge, Emeritus Voices among others