Cluster: Kayser & Anselmi

Talley V. Kayser / Daniel Anselmi 

As a Kayaking Guide, I Always Describe Oyster Sex with Particular Care.
Shem Creek, South Carolina

Some fathers object to the mention of semen
in front of their offspring. Some mothers remark
that “the girl oysters have life much harder,” and we
who have vulvas nod sagely. A bro in pink glasses
once boomed, “it’s a clusterfuck, dude!” and I used
that same joke for all subsequent bros. But what blows

people’s minds isn’t how shellfish sex slicks the creeks
in late spring, or the wild odds that each thrashing larva
must face, or that some spawning females release fifty
million or more eggs per day––but the way oysters
change. Protandry, simultaneous hermaphrodites…
I explain. Middle schoolers who giggled at sperm

all clam up and avoid that one kid with their eyes––
or a red-cheeked man quickly intones, “God be praised!
His creation is wondrous!”––or maybe a grayed
pair of women share wide grins and laugh. Oh, so strange,
what goes on in this water we cross. Boys grow up
to be girls. Girls can also be boys. Never mind

that for seventeen million years oysters have thrived
through such changes––it’s slippery space. So I say:
“what amazing resilience.” I say, “great success
under pressure.” I marvel at oysters, who bear
hurricanes on rough shoulders, who shelter the weak
of the sea, whose strong stomachs cleanse impurities

from each last drop of marsh, every day. I call out
to my clients, and raise high my water. Together,
we toast Crassostrea virginica’s honor:
all praise to the oyster, robust clusterfucker,
both mother and father, essential.

 

©Daniel Anselmi, “Untitled (3-1).” Collage, 2017.

 

©Daniel Anselmi, “Untitled.” Collage, 2013.


 

 

 

©Daniel Anselmi, “Untitled (2B).” Collage, 2014.

 

 

 

 

 

©Daniel Anselmi, “Untitled.” Collage, 2016.

 

 

 

 

 

©Daniel Anselmi, “Untitled.” Collage, 2013.

 

Black Skimmers
Colonial Lake, June.

I.

Their art is called cut-water.

Wide-flung and tapered wings lilt in iambic rhythms.
Black and white, with surety and speed,
the wild birds trace the edges of the lake
as if they’re caged, trailing
ink-shaped shadows.

From low, unbroken flight
their sleek necks stretch. Red, blade-thin beaks
reach, slice their own reflections––each
bird carves its one white line, a single wake:
a lean, bright trail
a clean and perfect shape
that flares against the surface
and then fades.

 

II.

such beauty! in
these gentle
carousel flights
dipping as if to drink

(but the birds are not drinking)

the shallows tremble with ripples/and the wet light
shudders. half-sunk cups gape

open wonder. crumpled
wrappers hum, and lift
their crumbling offerings
in silver fists

(but the birds are not gods)

what then/of this/jittered rhythm/
what then/shall we make of this/strange flight

(watch the shallows)

and what shall we watch in the shallows

 

(the fishes that tilt their flat eyes toward the light
and seek it, as if summoned)

III.

The art is called cut-water. It recurs.

Again the skimmers pass––again, they bend
their necks to long, low kisses. Ripples sing.

Watch closely the wild silence of their wings.
Watch close the wounds they knife into the water.


This is no quiet art.

This art is hunger.


 

 

 

©Daniel Anselmi, “Untitled.” Collage, 2013.

 

 

 

 

 

©Daniel Anselmi, “Untitled (12-1).” Collage, 2016.

 

 

 

©Daniel Anselmi, “Untitled.” Collage, 2013.

 

 

©Daniel Anselmi, “Self Portrait.” Collage, 2018.

 

 

 

 

©Daniel Anselmi, “Untitled.” Collage, 2016.

 

 

Albatross Ekphrasis
after Chris Jordan

it is unlike me
to look at a bird
and think of myself

and not the bird.
but still I wonder
which bright bits
stab jagged

through my even
most silversoft lining. which
is the biggest bolus
drawing the eye

when
I am
opened

*

my little brother
is a doctor. my little
brothers cuts people open my
little brother cut open a person

cadaver corpse––for a
full year he teased it
into pieces. he says
they start you with

the back. the face
comes last. the face
is difficult. one morning
he gently lifted

a bright bow tie from
the neck of his
corpse. he walked the scrap
of plastic to the trash

then turned to his lab mates.
we’re not doing that
again. he says
they covered her

hands to hide the color
on her nails, which was like
someone’s mother’s.

*

the photographer’s hands
(bare) teased from the
dark bile of the bird that stuff

which cut and
lodged and
crowded but never
fed and therefore

killed. the photographer scrubbed
each bright piece clean
and lay it back against
the opened body

riddle: my father
is like unto or not
the photographer

*

much of my mother
has been removed

but lucky she
remitted. I made
the mistake of googling

tumor. I am no doctor but
they don’t appear to come
in a wide variety

of colors. my mother
is farm-raised and
well bred. also uneasy

and diseased. my mother
fed on food fresh
from the garden

which they sprayed
same as the cotton.

*

the birds swallowed
the bright bits on the sand, as they
have always done.

as they have always done,
they offered from the depths
of their bodies those same bits

and fed their children, so tell me
what I’ve swallowed. tell me
how it’s killing me. given the chance

I would prefer to slough in the dirt
without particular color––no pink
clinging to my nails, no strange red

bulge collecting in my breast, no evidence
of which stray memory choked
my growth or stunted flight,

which sadness I was fed
and ate. I would prefer
earth swarm what’s left:

an opened harmlessness,
soft, gnawable flesh
and clean, bright bits of bone.

 

 

 

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Talley V. Kayser has been an outdoor professional since 2007, and has worked as a naturalist and wilderness guide throughout the United States. During the academic year, she directs The Pennsylvania State University’s Adventure Literature Series, teaching courses that combine literary study and outdoor exploration.

Daniel Anselmi explores the use of paper as a dialogue between painting and collage. He creates painted paper as one would handle a brush to elicit brushstrokes on surfaces, creating opportunities to express color, line, and form. All works are Untitled, removing references that  interfere with or assist in viewer perception.

Stanizzi & Marble: Listening

flying_birds_2

John L. Stanizzi Anne Marble       


Skein

a length of yarn or thread wound on a reel or swift
nest of yarn on Zia Rose’s lap
beaks of knitting needles
pecking mittens into being

*
ice and wool
in murky chunks
inedible on mittens

*
mittens on the radiator
sun a hank of fire
on the horizon

*
the swifts are gone
but the blackbirds
murmur by the thousands

a succession or series of similar or interrelated things such as an incoherent skein of words
wounds healed
by the long stand of years
the theology of the sun

*
golden gratefulness
eruptions of wind
flowers bowing in the storm

*
listening to flesh
you draw closer
glisten with urgency


*
you leave
past the moon
swift with borrowed light
a flock of geese, ducks, or the like, in flight
low over Mansfield
coming together from three directions
three skeins of geese

*
the Chinese poets
might say they conduct a message
of love from afar

*
their boundless sound
the white flecks of their bellies
thrusting air up and down

*
your swift breathing
is the air
that reels me in


A Sign; acrylic on canvas; 30 in. x 40 in. © Anne Marble

Lungs; paper, ink, acrylic paint, glue on board; 24 in. x 30 in. © Anne Marble


LISTEN

for Cathy O’Reilly

On a clear, warm summer day
Cathy handed me a prize
she’d received from the surf.
It was a vertebra,
from a fish I imagine,
about the size of the top of my thumb,
and so smooth,
so rounded by the sea,
it felt soft.
I was holding it this morning,
rubbing the tips of my fingers
all over its unlikely velvetiness,
when I noticed that if I held it
so that I could look through
the hole in its middle
it looked like a resplendent ear,
this one small piece
of something from the sea,
something larger,
more complex,
and now on dry land,
a separate entity,
a curio given by the ocean to Cathy
and by Cathy to me,
so that now when I’m alone in this room
I no longer worry
that when I speak into the nothingness of frustration
my words will go unheard

The Messenger; acrylic on canvas 30 in. x 40 in. © Anne Marble



 

Magic Inside; acrylic on canvas 30 in. x 40 in. © Anne Marble

Magic Inside; acrylic on canvas 30 in. x 40 in. © Anne Marble

SKEIN II

I was on my way into the gym and
heard the geese blaring before I saw them,
a skein from the west, the V visible
but ragtag. I was looking up now, and
from the east a second skein was coming,
their raucous clamor growing as they rammed
the first V, though “rammed” may not be the best
way to describe what I saw; it was more
like the calibration of clockworks, each
bird part of a pinion meshing with the
larger wheel, a gear-train powering south.

As one bird pulled in behind the other,
their heart rates slowed but their speed increased as
they slipstreamed across the January
sky; and then a third skein came barreling
in from the north, the third wheel in this huge
going-train, urging and gliding, every
goose baying a one note song millions of
years old; and below their riotous noise

the V appeared with the kind of wonder
that becomes visible only after
it has happened. And I was left standing,
my senses staggered, my spirit increased,
as in the distance their yawping became
quiet, their instinct, their impulse for south
moving them along, me waiting for spring,
the geese gone, their perfect escapement done.


Chains; monotype print; 22 in. x 30 in. © Anne Marble

Chains; monotype print; 22 in. x 30 in. © Anne Marble

John L. Stanizziauthor of Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, and Hallelujah Time!  His poems have appeared in American Life In Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Tar River Poetry, The New York Quarterly, Rattle, and others.  He teaches literature at Manchester Community College. 

Anne Marble is a painter and monotype printmaker who lives in the Philadelphia area.  Her background in biology and environmental planning often serves as a reference for her work in both media. She is also the founder of a non-profit organization supporting several rural schools in Cambodia.  On her visits to Cambodia, she teaches printmaking to middle school students.  She maintains an active studio in Norristown,
Pennsylvania.  

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