Archive for January, 2012
Stone or fish?
Tuesday, January 31st, 2012[ZB Magnet 3] Athanasius Kircher (1601-1680), Magnes sive De arte magnetica tripartium (Rom: Blasius Diversis … Zanobius Masottus, 1654), Zentralbibliothek Zürich, Alte Drucke und Rara, NP 1, p. 528
Sampurna Chattarji: In response to the latest image
Monday, January 30th, 2012Unpeel the imminent skin,
fissure the smooth beginning with
the knowledge of brows
that will pucker in disbelief,
this is not the face we knew,
this ravaged circuitry is another
way of acknowledging defeat,
who exposed it to our
eyes?
Sampurna Chattarji: Body Clock III
Thursday, January 26th, 2012Green planet in the light warm from lack of wind. Sails slice geometrically the air on a screen where the weather is constant, only the movement from another moving body can return her to a sense of time, an eagerness that travels from room to room like blood through slowly thickening veins. At such moments everything seems possible until it ends and the planet outside her window returns unchanged, except for a gradation from green to grey to yellow. This is the storm that will break all continuities and become a diatribe.
Sampurna Chattarji: Body Clock: II
Tuesday, January 24th, 2012Every hour the bird strikes. A coo at one, a caw at two. By the time it’s three she is thinking of seed, and the way that wings destroy sleep. She has never seen a woodpigeon or a woodchuck. At four the mockingbird returns. Beaks into minutes. One insistent peck at a time, the trunk riddled. Colour leaves her hair, nests elsewhere. A squawk at six, a shriek at seven. Give me a sec, she says, too hurried to finish that already small word. Forefinger on neck, she confirms she is alive.
Sampurna Chattarji: Champion the soldier of the current,
Friday, January 20th, 2012the livid angel who sings violet songs of praise,
there is no other warning except the one inside your chest,
open and you shall see, warm, good-looking,
the season of seasons,
every whiff of narrowness gone, bold, bolder still,
the cher ami from foreign songs,
this foreign body inside my eye blinds me,
like a tubular rose, rising towards the sun.
Sampurna Chattarji: Good morning merry sunshine,
Tuesday, January 17th, 2012foam on the lips of the sea,
cappuccino foam, foam that is home to horses,
the glandular hand, joints like wires, like sails,
each tiny door in your morning, good,
like the truth of teeth, smiling,
each tool we use to fix the way the day turns,
tightening every screw.