Vonkverse

Body maps

Ingrid de Kok

Take the body    trace its outline
map its armature
tendons    viscera    scar tissue
fractures    swellings
promises and wishes.
Map age    genes    place of origin
and love’s lineaments.

For mapped onto each body is love.

Cartography of one’s own country
or the contours of a foreign land.

A journey through forests
over cataracts
turbulent rivers    peaks
ravines    rift valleys
grasslands    wetlands
oceans    sand.
Down mine shafts.
Through truck stops.
In towns and cities.
On tarred roads    dirt tracks.

At the shoreline is a flare
where pain’s fire
consumes itself
with its earth-hunger
unquenched thirst
burning wings.

It lights the way
back to touch
soft or violent
stretched or shortened
above    below
where there are sounds
soft calls    moans
fright    resistance    silence
movements
towards or away
where there is rupture or seeping
where openings are buds
that shrink or blossom
where the spine buckles
or uncurls
where nails draw blood
or declawed fingers
touch tip to tip
and palms dance.

Mapped onto each body is
that first launch into love:
parachute drop of our begetters
and then each body’s own
open or closed arms and legs.

And onto the bodies of those
who die of love’s lesions
we map our love too
guilty shadow tracings
lucky escape routes
provisional survival.

Take your own body
or the leached body
of your mother    your father
your brother    your sister.
Transparent body
of glass    of leaves
of encoded messages
to the past and the future
unique thumbprint maze
ubiquitous death mask.

Take it    trace it    map it    remember.

LitNet: 24 Januarie 2006

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