Mary Harju '18

Ode On Love (2003)

What is the essence of a too-brief kiss?
   The rigor of reaching the thing-in-itself,
from subject to object, chaos to bliss,
    our frail intuition of heavenly health?
Our love is not molecules, dumbly colliding,
    nor it it knowledge, formal and static,
       nor it it accident, reasoned and plumbed—
it's real, meta-rational, soaring and gliding,
    felt like an earthquake, bringing up panic,
       taking our parts and achieving a sum.

The greater part of love is sacrifice—
    flesh intermingled, tensing and tingled,
this is the secret I learn from your eyes.
    Giving my body- knotted, single,
tiny eruptions that come from my tongue—
    plunging down surface, slicking the flesh,
       thoughtless as leopards or hurricane winds—
watching you shudder, watching you come,
     rapt in the throes of an innocent death,
         giving my life to an inch of your skin.

Thus, we trade in secure oblivion
    for reckless reality, messy and fleeting.
Such is the cosmos: creation, carrion,
    motions of molecules merging and meeting.
Nothing is lost but notions of self-ness,
    hard ideations that closet and clatter,
       rages of ego that strain at their walls—
nothing is gained but a sense of the deathless,
    "there-ness" of spirit, "there-ness" of matter,
        ultimate "there-ness" that scares as it calls.

Eratio 26: The White Album (2nd Edition)

The new issue of Eratio (26) features, in its entirety, the second edition of the e-book The White Album, initially released by Ungovernable Press in 2009.

If Life Is Making Your Head Bleed...

...then beat a hasty retreat back to 1488.