POET-IN-RESIDENCE, 1.9: Eleni Sikelianos

From the Flatmancrooked Winter 09/10 Poet-In-Residence, Eleni Sikelianos, comes selected poems, chosen by the poet from her body of work. These posts will appear every Sunday for the next ten weeks, after which a new Poet-In-Residence will be introduced and his or her work featured. This number 9 of 10. The poems featured in previous weeks can be found here: Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5, Week 6, Week 7, Week 8

This image-poem is from a series of experiments with minutes and hours, and is contained in my most recent book, Body Clock. When I wrote these, I was pregnant, and thinking a lot about the relationship between bodily form and time. I began drawing “portraits” of first minutes, then hours, writing notes as I drew. A minute had to be drawn within in a minute (which is harder than it sounds), and an hour within in hour. The typed language at the bottom of the hour is the “residue” — the language that is left after the image-poem.-Eleni

Fourth Hour

Fourth Experiment with an Hour (Fourth Hour’s Residue)

Language hangs from the hour in crystalline repose

to set it in motion must we

Its stalk is feathered & gay

I saw this hour before it arrived shoeless speechless helpless

medusa dripping poison A’s each B a sting a stamp because

because daylight savings saddens the ghost

it’s amazing how hungry an hour can be Hand me something

to pillow the hour, protect it from its own devouring minutes

I had to do things with this hour I would never have wished

In the hour’s-heart’s garden of earthly delights

A minute sat waiting on a rock with gnashing teeth

The human drips from herself where she hangs in time her

minutes are bleeding her bream this broken-mouthed minute

as if the minute as if the minute

broken-mouthed machine