#MeToo: Elizabeth Guthrie

Elizabeth Guthrie

 

 

The Alchemist of Marine Street
 

her head bowed like a beast
she takes steps backward,
losing her place, searching
for a pair of hands

                                                                                    In grey dark

the space crumbles and
airs discontentment in her
reproach still not moving
forward, shaking and unclear

                                                                                    Part light

her hands misplaced in
their stir, the whirl of displaced
objects in the last room, the next room
covering her hands

                                                                                    In sparks dark

her room, still
so unmoved no matter
the static in her head, she
wishes to raise her hands

                                                                                    To blinking lights

a wild beast in earnest
appealing in unleashed calls
against a static moor, hand-tricks
for movement,

                                                                                    In the dark

for a memory, to make
a past of stifling temperature,
to beckon in the end
of a standstill

                                                                                    Shadows light

to bring together what she
might, to hold a spoon
a bottle, blue glass
to her delight

                                                                                    So dark

but with rain, with wind
with no hands, with no
course, she brings in
with her grey mind

                                                                                    Lightening

pleading, find her her motion
and looking down, finds in all
the static it is her hands she wills
and cannot find,

                                                                                    Convoluted dark

now the sprawling epoch, an epoch
for losing things, compression
fires blue and unhot, cold burns
flying away and out of reach,

                                                                                    Flickering light

she thinks now out of sight
she might take to her bed
and fly, out of static, to see
if in the morning the sun will burning light.

 

§

 

Portrait – Caption

 

Artist Name: Portrait of America—sketch

Title: …of the girl in the bathroom at the Montaignes Apartments
         having been chased there, folding a paper flower, a sculpture for love
         —to love, a sculptural ode

Year:

Dimensions:

Medium:

 

§

 

Flight Plan

 

It was when she was looking for a horizon
That the room was black and then
Through the lighted jaw of a deep ocean
Fish came an ancient choice
Stretching the periphery
Of the ultimate, making the absolute
Unclear, yawning and trying her in her
Static squat, the position over
A black trash bag with beads
In it, their little holes
And penny roles, little moments some
Wrenches, some with switches, a broken
Thing and her dogged broken, stooped over it pulling, her in, her way in,
      she was too
Far gone growing plastic webs
Between her fingers, settled down
In the middle of a room with the better
Door blowing cold air and a boy
Watching her maintain space
Over one of a number of mounds
And holes and boxes overdue
According to him, depending
On the distribution of those colorful items
That occupy little space, little pointy
Items he likes now the one who should
Care—she puzzles over
The outlines and reckless
Filling, a renegade muse or abandoned timid thing.

 

§

 

“Portrait – Caption” was previously published by Contraband Books.