Red Channel in the Rupture

Amber Flora Thomas

• Publisher: Red Hen Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781597096195
• eBook ISBN: 9781597096201
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

Red Channel in the Rupture is a gathering place for the troubling abuses of the past. Looking through the lens of the present moment, Thomas shows us the open palm necessary to embrace change, as she finds beauty in bodies gnashed, trapped, and crushed into change. Images and experiences bleed together as we confront with the poet the animal of loss and death. Moving through the aperture of landscapes and moments that have defined this poet, we discover the rupturing territory of time and change. We recover absolution for what has tried to kill our very souls. Here is the "endless rope" thrown out to all of us in our shame and fear; we would be wise to snatch this coil from the air.

III.

Reels

Self-Portrait with Teeth

In a wood near Pungo Lake

I untangle juvenile canines

from hair and bone in old scat,

putting their orphaned circle

on my palm. My feral dead

returned by a red wolf, and

I won’t leave them again.

A fox maybe. His baby teeth

gnashed enamel fins. I’ll ask

a naturalist for the story when

I find the visitor’s center.

Right now, the fox is bits

and bob, remnants in my palm

and I don’t know which tale

I’ve wandered in. A poor trade

for magic beans? I have no ax.

All around me water lips

in the cottonwoods. Long-

stemmed mushrooms use

a downed cypress to get above

the marsh. Trumpeter swans

in the first weeks of a winter revival

quartet over my head. Yet here

is gnawing and hunger enough.

I’ll trade you your brown cow

for these teeth. Jung said, the gold is

in the shit. Here is why I am alone,

channeling a grave, no longer rank

or wretched, but arranged on my palm.

My shovel and burlap left at home,

but I know what’s going down.

At the Presbyterian Hospital

I shake the paper skyline inside a snow globe

stamped New Mexico; a coyote slips behind

a cactus on his back and an equally large

rattlesnake weaves down from heaven.

Another lukewarm pool where the trouble

is fixed. The iron center working levers

in the heart machine, guides your

wide mouth back into the waves.

Song for the pale cage, an inescapable,

careful grasping of your fingers. At least

the orchids are purple and cheered

by frilly pink tongues on the side table.

I wash your earlobes and neck with splinters,

leave for hallway coffee and cups of ice.

“I see how you could dream this,” I whisper.

Tin under the rain break articulates the mythology.

Pigeons thrum the ledge after a car horn,

wings plucking a momentary night.

The resolve beneath the ribs, a child

grasping four opaque balloons.

I’ll treasure the souvenir. Water heaving

the same players at the sky, and we won’t drown

in the grit of happiness, as I fold the sheet

under your chin.

What She Means By Empty

She gave up the girls that spring and moved to a carriage house

on Highway 1 near Elk. I was washing a blue mug at her sink

and looking hard at the windowsill, an abalone shell filled

with Monarch Butterflies, their carcasses unchanged

vine and coil of orange and black

offering a petal-wing bouquet.

She welcomed me, sure,

but stepped outside to smoke.

Every ledge was occupied by crystals, driftwood, trinket

boxes—my sisters’ milk teeth in a velvet-lined wooden egg.

With a cigarette burning low, she watched the sea

and didn’t see me looking.

A window wheezed in the small house

and it was cold. I couldn’t stay. I still couldn’t forgive her,

though I waited in a chair and felt the sinking

rumble of a truck speeding over a pothole,

and I went back to the butterfly shrine.

Every wing I touched left dust on my fingers

and I felt how it was to destroy a creature

who had spent a long time growing beautiful.

Once you go down there

among the bulbs and the bitches,

you don’t get to change your mind.

She stood out there sucking the smoke

while jersey cows pastured next door

put their heads over the fence;

sometimes she gave them handfuls of grass

from her un-trampled yard. I watched.

Every passing car was a speedy disappearance,

a loss to know later.

Take Only Pictures

—Tent Rocks, NM

After the last rain,

in runnels between rocks,

obsidian blinks through

red and pink crust.

At the other end of the canyon,

mom leans her camera over Indian Bush,

and stops to push blonde

fly-away under her hat.

Out through t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• I. Stills
• II. Apertures
• III. Reels
• Biographical Note
• Back Cover