“Seduction” by Sharan Strange:
Not the round, shining globe
of the eye in profile,
nor the fissure of a smile calling,
as the earthquake does, some part of itself
back into itself, nor the curving
spine, an archipelago of promise—
those aspects offer the primal gift.But voluptuous thoughts, entrusted to words,
and words, the language of careful stones
circling about you,
and the fires those stones make,
the air they eat up all around, leaving
you breathless, the light
they cast reshaping everything,
and the new blood rising
in you, molten, disaster.
(From Ash by Sharan Strange, © 2001 by Sharan Strange. Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press, Boston. Image from the “We Are Nature” series by Christoffer Relander at Behance)
The Dish 