Passage from Virgin to Bride
for Marcel Duchamp
1.
He lifts the veil,
lifts the embargo
on touching
2.
Standing naked
in the center
of overlapping circles,
the Bride stripped bare
3.
The vibrations of his voice
enkindle flames over her radio
4.
Having entered the Bride’s domain,
a skyward meeting-
clandestine swashbuckling
in castles of cumulus;
fleshy vessels, funnels, and vanes rotate
within a vast anarchic breach
5.
The Bride’s effusions
in Greek and Latin
suggest the Milky Way
6.
A splash, as of a bottle
uncorked–
or a waterwheel powered
by an unseen waterspout
whose spiral fountain
splits into nine
phosphorescent tongues–
the champagne bubbles break,
the Bride evaporates
7.
What began as an infinite response,
converges in a single, golden river
like a monocle fixed upon a candle
8.
The passage from winter
to spring: a delicate
explosion
9.
Cleft,
the rock in the wilderness
spouts cataracts.
About Christen Mattix
Christen Mattix is an interdisciplinary artist–painting, writing, performing, filmmaking. She grew up the eldest of 8 children in Thailand where her dad was a missionary translator, and her mom, a fulltime homemaker. Returning to the US, Christen studied painting and literature at Western Washington University, and later, received an MFA in filmmaking and painting at the San Francisco Art Institute.
See Christen’s latest project “For Longing” at christenmattix.wordpress.com
To submit your poetry to Psaltery & Lyre, please see our submission guidelines.
;