Leaving Evolution
by Shivani Sivagurunathan
there is a church where we
pluck spiders’ hairs,
do you know it?
the reddened architecture
tasting like weekday wafers
where we paced the insect nursery.
remember blue blood?
how all water iced our
image, a stickman turned
inward on a stickwoman,
we imagine the arachnid
reclining in an amber stone,
like a rusted occurrence.
finally, you spoke the spinneret
and i left off from the deep
maroon filament,
the silk looking like crabs
from beaches of my youth,
i see the salt shooting from old
days to this church, and all
this fluidity,
signaling
a lymphatic egg sac, seeping
the first albumen which
we collect in painted pots,
charms its way, furious
sun-rubble, to the archway
you might not know.
do you know it?
the black-streaked abdomen,
the octagon of our borders?
our book lungs held tight
in a hymn?
last time’s funnel-silk
embracing the corridor?
if not, then let me tell you this:
it is a common place where we consider
acrimony and watch the nightlights
spread through an
intestinal climate, when in a
moment a lip is drawn apart
and the confetti of spiders
of which we dreamed
convulses between the expectant stars,
venom drops,
bells come into their own,
a crawl through gossamer,
between the forgotten walls
then seals our juncture.
Shivani Sivagurunathan is a Malaysian poet and fiction writer. Her poems have appeared in publications such as ‘Agenda Broadsheet,’ ‘The Wolf,’ and ‘lighthouse city.’ She is currently a Senior Lecturer at University Putra Malaysia and is working on a novel titled ‘A Place to Be,’which is set in present day Malaysia and explores the concept of home.
Poem © 2010 Shivani Sivagurunathan. All other content copyright © 2010 Abyss & Apex Publishing.
Copyrighted by the author unless otherwise noted.
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