How much can a woman weep, (do they wonder?) The first martyr was God, then I followed. The final stages of limerance— liquid grief harvested in the fire. The wound of the world is... a woman. In the horse of your heart I dug my broken ring fingers. I mourn the unworn liquid veil when I married the night, as a child. I mourn not knowing sisterhood, motherhood, stardom or light. I mourn who I longed to be— a mother in a land of fathers. I mourn not getting sugar rubbed in my wound. I mourn my spine, bent over backwards— the footstool of divinity.
I thought I’d experiment a little with my poetry. I see the next big trend is concrete and visual poetry, astral and mystic, so I’m hopping on the bandwagon. I put the simple, clean version first, as the following versions get pretty hectic.
I started having fun with it and ended up splitting the original version into three pillars, creating micro poems that seem slightly divinatory. You can pick and mix them to create new micro poems. I know this will look crazy on mobile, so there’s a screenshot below.
How much can a W O M A N weep, (do they wonder?) The first martyr was G O D, then I f o l l o w e d . The final stages of L I M E R A N C E — liquid grief harvested in the fire The wound of the world is a . . . [ W O M A N ] In the HORSE of your HEART I dug my broken ring fingers. I mourn the unworn L I Q U I D V E I L when I married ..................................... when I married the N I G H T , ......................................... as a child. .......................................................... I mourn not knowing S I S T E R H O O D , M O T H E R H O O D , ......................................... STARDOM or L I G H T . I mourn who I longed to be— a mother in a land of fathers. I mourn not getting S U G A R rubbed in my wound. I mourn my spine, bent over backwards— the footstool of divinity. _______________________________ [_______________________________] || \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/ || || || / | | \ (____) (____)
My favorites are:
harvested in the fire
of your HEART
I mourn the unworn
......................................
as a child.and
a W O M A N The first martyr was f o l l o w e d .
and the footstool, I love that one. If you’d like, make your own and leave it in the comments.
The three-pillar thing reminded me of something else with pillars, sometimes two, sometimes three, and I found incredible synchronicities when laid out in that shape, with lots of correspondences with a certain mystical tree. Can you guess what it is?
[[ THE MOURNER ]]
How much can
a woman weep,
(do they wonder?)
The first martyr Then I followed.
was God,
The final stages of
limerance— liquid grief
harvested in the fire.
The wound of the In the horse of
world is... your heart I
a woman. dug my broken
ring fingers.
I mourn the unworn
liquid veil when I
married the night,
as a child.
I mourn who I I mourn not
longed to be— knowing sisterhood,
a mother in motherhood, stardom
a land of fathers. or light.
I mourn not getting
sugar rubbed in
my wound.
I mourn my spine,
bent over backwards—
the footstool of
divinity.
Ah, my muse! You’ve done it again!
I love the experimentation on a meta level — and idek what that means. But if I had to explain, it’d be something like this:
The poem is like a child whose soul is twisted in the arms of a dejected mother.
You needed something to shatter and so it was, and so it was.
This has a clean, retro-aesthetic charm. I think I heard a dot-matrix printer while reading it.
My first encounter with this style was through fiction, rather than poetry (House of Leaves).
I have written several poems like this, which I would like to share, but Substack is very unforgiving with copy/paste formatting:(