Petroglyph

The titles of the poems are revelatory. Geranium Blues. Tiger’s Refrain. Houseguest’s Lament. There is a great deal more to literature than being flippant. One of us wields spiky grass stalks behind our opercles to ward off hallucinatory strangers. The other stops all hair maintenance until it turns into a matted clump which takes the shape of a delicate conch shell. Our fear of the dark cannot be presaged by light-producing organs nor by links between modified eye muscles & powdery sugar.  

Petroglyph

The night ends. The choices evaporate. There is a process through which a fixed percentage of us can be clearly distinguished. It involves oscillating between plant & stone. Branch & invertebrate. Chitid & lichen. Algae. Three of the saddest words in the dictionary.

All of us speak in generalities now. “Language is little more than a dialogue between unwilling participants.” We were not the first to peer over the edge of this particular volcano.

For some, it is not necessary to correct those who spread contradictory information. For others, the lack of correction is the exact thing that haunts them. Presumably, we must have conducted ourselves in much the same way, in so doing, attracting the hiss of a cicada storm. An archetype which holds sway over the actual text. 

Petroglyph

And so, we become dependent upon phosphate fertilisers & the deep, lustrous purples found in children’s notebooks. We remove the hull & other outer layers. We hulk through gardens of wavy sea grass & use our hands to blindly search out shiny mineral deposits & vents of superheated water.

Petroglyph

Turns out, there are very few of us who possess these specialised electroreceptors. But without them, how would we locate one another? How would we keep ourselves still & in the proper context? How would we behave during an onslaught of intermediary structures? How would we recognise the shape of each other’s faces?

Craig Foltz is the author of four books of poetry and/or prose (most recently "Petroglyphs" on Compound Press). He currently lives and works in New Plymouth on the slopes of this (theoretically) drowsing volcano. More information and requests for collaborative proposals can be found at: www.craigfoltz.com.