The Scream
The sky leaks it first. Then we’re pulled to the oily drift of the bridge to see where it ends. If it ends. Pulled To the figure in the foreground both less and more than human holding forever in his hands both his ears in a view that will never be over-- So infinite is it. One raining pitch, a twisted splicing of lines, clogged both less and more in the pipes of the sky than the dim canals of the ears. How it bends and winds the continuing etched pen and ink, drilling the runnels of rough and worn wooden slats Underneath with the depth of enduring inception luring us further and further in to the silent camp of the deaf where the railing of inner liquids runs in elliptical rivulets-- transfusions embalming the brain pumping a skeletal premonition through the facial bones of this gnome whose hands, upon staring become two pinned wings, two symmetrical slabs of marble framing the face like the hair of a woman-- So that now it is lion, serpent, bird-- the shared eye and ear of the inhuman, wild with nightmare sustained in the shadowed couple arm in arm in the tiny background-- calm as the cloud of lake while ribs of the sky quietly starve in testament to the steeple riding its fading spine to the edge of the cliff gliding and ringing both beneath and above the bridge singing and singing a gorgon’s lullabye. Deborah DeNicola This poem was previously published in Where Divinity Begins, by Deborah DeNicola from Alice James Books. Deborah DeNicola is the author of two collections of poetry, most recently, Original Human, 2010 from Word Tech, Where Divinity Begins from Alice James Books, four chapbooks, and her memoir, The Future That Brought Her Here from NicholasHays 2009. She edited Orpheus & Company; Contemporary Poems on Greek Mythology (UPNE.) An adjunct professor, and editor, DeNicola received The Carpe Articulum Award in 2010, Briar Cliff Poetry Award, 2007, the Santa Barbara Poetry Award, 2008 and The Paul Hoover Critical Essay Award from Packingtown Review, 2009. She is the recipient of an artist’s fellowship from the NEA. Her web site is www.intuitivegateways.com.
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July 2025
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