Image: "The Ghosts of Under Milk Wood"
Dan Llywelyn Hall, Artist
Dancing With Sylvia
Your
words sink to the asphalt,
evaporate.
And
would they ever,
the
things you say,
Harden
and congeal?
In
promises?
In
secret pacts?
Surely,
such abstract signs and sounds
Leave
your tongue bereft of meaning
puddled
lamplit
hush
of your intention—shadows, shadows.
I
could tell you,
Their
flesh bears no substance.
Dark
curves of letter, the lengthening vowel
haunting
constant,
dark
shadow on canvas.
The
stars
Have
such a gap to fill.
Such
emptiness, blackness.
Would
that your meanings erupt
Wet
and molten
dorsal
bone
Jutting,
broken
Breaking
through the scaly skin of language—
Fire-crested.
Woe
to me,
who
am instead
witness
to
These
dead, these sacrificed
Rising
up like bile, like black tidewater.
Elizabeth
Johnston
About the Poet:
Elizabeth Johnston teaches
writing, literature, and gender studies at Monroe Community College in Rochester, NY. Her scholarly
work centers on representations of female sexuality in literature, television,
and film and has been published in a number of academic journals and edited
collections, most recently in Disjointed
Perspectives on Motherhood (Lexington Books, 2013). Slated for
publication are three additional essays in Mythology
and Modern Women Poets: Analysis, Reflection & Teaching
(MacFarland, 2014), The
Eternal Internal Gender Wars of Our Sisters (KH Publishing, 2014),
and SLI: Studies in the
Literary Imagination 47.2 (Spring 2015). Likewise, her fascination
with representations of gender infuses her creative work; since 2011, her
poetry has appeared in a variety of print and online journals and edited
collections, most recently New
Verse News (April 2014) and Mom
Egg Review (April 2014). New poems written by Elizabeth will be
featured in forthcoming issues of NonBinary
Review, The Luminary, and Rose
Red Review, and in the print anthology, Veils, Halos, and Shackles: An Anthology of International
Poetry (Eds. Charles Fishman and Smita Sahay). She is a founding member
of the Rochester-based writer’s group, Straw Mat and facilitates writing
workshops at the Breast Cancer Coalition of Rochester. She lives in North
Chili, on the west side of Rochester, with her partner, Brian, two daughters,
Ava and Christina, and a menagerie of animals.
About the Artist:
'Deaths and Entrances' An exhibition of paintings and prints by Dan Llywelyn Hall
6th - 13th September 2014
Coningsby Gallery
30 Tottenham Street
London, W1T 4RJ
Open 9am - 6.00pm daily
Free entry
The Dylan Thomas centenary exhibition of paintings and prints inspired by the writer's poetry and short stories.
Coningsby Gallery
30 Tottenham Street
London, W1T 4RJ
Open 9am - 6.00pm daily
Free entry
The Dylan Thomas centenary exhibition of paintings and prints inspired by the writer's poetry and short stories.
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