Oni Buchanan: Three Poems

(A)Version | Vespers | Architecture of Tears

(A)Version

......................Of all our selves, what if we could choose among
............or had to suffer some to surface full-blown
......................to the present, revived from the burial of
..........................years, as if a fresco's under-drawing rose rust-red
........through paint, and visible, this blueprint of a current
............scene, a being— Or like nesting dolls, unscrew our torsos
.......to exhume a younger self, a hatching treacherous by chance,
.........for perhaps some ancient Vesuvius unearthed to scald,
...........or some unrecognizable, larval stage appear, some
.wide-eyed thing soaking in its equivalent in glass, mistaking
......................one split self for another, oh possible comrade of the years,
................witness to unspoken anecdotes and anguish.
..................Must we endure confessions from such molding mouths,
................parade of variations, garish apparitions—or can I
.......................know you again, lynx-eyed oracle; will you speak
...............to me, strange beast, beginning, beaten thing
..........in the language, in the constellation of languages I've forgotten?

Vespers

...................Each escaped by district, the lonely
........................welding of bones—Forgive
................us: we punish ourselves, each
.................our Mondrian chambers arranged—
....................the rank, the fetid breath
................impenetrable, wet, kept.
...............Each our hypnotic rite
...................to outdo yellowing days, the haze
...................that clouds the edge of hours.
...For the sundowns seep into the dawns lest we
....................remark them, lest each his
.............tarnished isolated blade whet
...........to knick a rift into the too-smooth
............surface, ration minutes into wells
........to shape a message—an artifact—
........answer—a clue?

Architecture of Tears

Porous, or, it pours
into us— will you call
this cathedral
a pile of rocks?
Will you call this rock
the moon? A home? And the blank
wedged in place
like a piece of hewn
bone in the brain (the vault,
a faltering), the incision
in the grid of air
to hear deep within,
for the grid, a deafening grate
of gears, a falling of white flakes
in tandem (the edifice held
by buttresses, ribs
without breath). Fluctuating golds
in the fluctuating light.
And the other colors too
opening and closing
as a light shaft shifts
through the stained shards
arranged, wings
pinned to a wheel, beating,
and like a spun prism
the deflected hues flung
in shower, scatter, a patter, a parable
of rays— And the days
spill away; the days
dewing on their drop,
the drip of days, brimming—
What if the lopsided moon too
fell toward its swelling? Toppled?
The flight of an arch
simultaneously toward, away
from the sky—and leading
aside, a path into the overgrown,
the plumes of grass
web-danced, so that the time,
cooled: beads
threaded on a silken strand,
and the smallest part,
a glass-blown sphere,
crystalline—a tear?

Poet's Biography:

Oni Buchanan is the author of What Animal, published in October 2003 by the University of Georgia Press. She has poems currently appearing or forthcoming in Conduit, Seneca Review, Dragonfire, and Forklift: Ohio. She holds a B.A. in English and music from the University of Virginia, an M.F.A. in poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and a Master's degree in piano performance from the New England Conservatory of Music. She actively performs across the U.S., and her third piano CD is forthcoming in October 2006. She is on the piano faculty at the New School of Music in Cambridge, maintains a private teaching studio, and serves as an online poetry mentor for the Anna Akhmatova Foundation.