2005 Writers Forum
Fredda Jaffe
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Listen to an excerpt of Fredda's reading (MP3) |
photo credit:
dean wong
dean wong
Moves, water moves as water does
rushes past tree trunks and stones
downstream trailing foam,
brushing the shoulders of sand on either side
pure liquid wrestles with itself
as blood flows through veins and organs
required by the code of DNA waiting to be wiped
clean as a blackboard on Christmas Day,
or comforted by a whiff of steam from soup,
smooth film of fat skimming the surface of themselves,
those bold and patient few who
sit in rooms lit by overhead fluorescence
while results of an angiogram are studied
through bifocals and the careful lens of her and him,
a picture of the Yuba River at dusk
framed above them, dangling on the wall like an artery
precariously close to the heart
causing pain in the left arm, read like a manifesto issued
by Marx, warning of religion as an opiate,
himself a believer in fine cigars and imported spirits,
the me subverted to the us, or whatever it
takes to make a revolution or a duck
floating on the surface of a smooth lake,
a Cleopatra without her Julius drying feathers in the air,
in the dazzling sun, dipping down with her beak to sift
through silt or swim, dreaming of his corpulent back,
scratched, as it was when her beloved
used his wiles to trick, seduce,
through voice and touch and thrill,
blood pumping in and out of chambers
until it almost leapt out of the body,
glistening with water, moving as a man is moved,
shaken to his core by a glance,
shaken and moved to innocence.
Jack Straw Productions: The Audio Arts Center for the Pacific Northwest