Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Topography, by Lesleigh Owen

Occasionally a poet comes along who transforms words into magic.

Lesleigh Owen is such a poet. She writes magic and "fats" it unbelievably.


Happy Birthday,  Lesleigh.

This poem is from Fat Poets Speak 2:  Living and Loving Fatly




Topography                                  Lesleigh Owen

I travel the city,
a fat body writ large
with streets for veins
and hills
and grassy knolls
with clumps
of brackish fragrance.

Yellow grass crackles underfoot
while a sky, blue as weeping eyes,
presses down,
a glossy windowpane.
Pathways wind and lead and
devour,
like thighs, always leading inward,
beige gradually darkening:

a tunnel, a turnpike.
I can’t see where to go
but don’t always
feel lost.


The wind trembles against me,
sighs up my skirt,
a breath of life
that steals my words.

Leafless trees groan upward,
thorns piercing dimpled flesh.
Brown-gray, the ground
shudders beneath
spills of acorns.

The terrain is too rugged for flowers,
though red roses hang upside-down,
spent and drying.
Earth cracks and crumbles
while short, plump fingers
caress, untangle, untie
knotted clouds.

Three months ago, I moved away
from California but
no closer to Florida.
Middle ground, middle
and open my mouth wide
to breathe comfort
and actions into words
and in those moments, 
I can almost taste the bottom
of the world.

Copyright 2013, by Lesleigh Owen



2 comments:

  1. Thank you for those gorgeous and so-flattering words, my friend.

    ReplyDelete