Autobiography with God Complex and Epidemic

Autobiography with God Complex and Epidemic Jennifer Militello (bio) I have always been a statue, my absenceof gestures just right, my eyes too clean,my knees oiled, all parts of me draped. The corridors of me whisper with chains. I tryto make a language from the splendid voids of rain.I try to be nourished by what has been inedible. Then I starve. I am shocked by the begging bowlspresent in my hands. I pass through ghostsof my own gone self. The little winds that are its pulse. The little innards thatkeep it hot. The jolt of it is near enough.The art of it is tapered shut. My image thins and cracks like the high notesof a choir. The most outward parts of mefix and flex. Neat sutures border this: a kiss of whim, a stitch of thistle, a lickof phobias. A fidget of shivers winds its wayin. My mind is a lamplight for silence. My heart fashioned of artificial ash, my heart [End Page 51] a divan of shadows. That geography of palpitations,my heart: it houses thousands of embers. What is shark-like. What is frayed. Its requiemslend luminosity. Bewitched interiors,pale and collective. A blue significance of trees. I fast while others feast. My soul: its electricalquarries. I am sated by my brought mouths.I am quiet by their lakes. The eye in me drowns. The brow in me bleeds. I can seemdim. I am at rest. As the ghosts that rule fleshdie in its bed, their syntax scaffolding the breath. [End Page 52] Jennifer Militello Jennifer Militello is the author of Flinch of Song, winner of the Tupelo Press First Book Prize, and of the chapbook Anchor Chain, Open Sail. Her second collection, Body Thesaurus, is forthcoming from Tupelo Press. Her poems have appeared in the Kenyon Review, the New Republic, the North American Review, the Paris Review, and Best New Poets 2008. Copyright © 2011 Jennifer Militello

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Biography · Silence · Soul · Theology · Thou · Visual arts · Food Security and Health in Diverse Populations · Philosophy