The Qualia of Souls: Apocrypha
That the transcendent, life-giving radiance that daily reaches down
to us from the celestial heights also reaches up to us from far below
the ground. That there’s a Holiness that dwells and dreams
at the very center of the Earth.
—David Abram
Winter is their season, summer too bright for disclosure.
Flickering shadows: their home movies.
Do not confuse them with spirit, that frantic city, clay breathiness.
Beyond life, beyond death, thumbprint inked in mystery.
They know one word that lodges like a locket in the heart. It’s a noun.
It’s always about food or eyes or music. Nobody ever talks
about their love of textures, wools especially.
They are shaped like O’s, of course.
Are they really halved as Plato declares? Doubt it. We can only
die solo. Which is not to say they don’t like companionship.
They start out ancient. Even if we live a long life,
we never catch up with them, nor should we.
They take themselves very seriously.
When they do speak, they gong, in rippled circles.
They often visit the cave paintings, amuse themselves with labyrinths,
spelunk darkness.
We must let them rise and set within us.
They can disguise themselves as any mammal.
Sorrow grows them, nurtures their long dark roots.
They’re prone to weight gain.
They respect pure thought but only as the satin lining in the heavy coat of feeling.
Not to their taste, flowers, birds, wind.
Not heavenward, souls point down. They go low.
Dog or horse escorts at the end. Please, no aspirational angels!
Where do they go at our death? They stay with the body. It’s their duty. Until.
Traveling, traveling, arrived! At their destination, the Earth’s magnetic core.
Attracted like shavings, down through thin crust and furthermore mantle,
millions and millions of miles, to the planet’s heart.
They congregate around the sun in the center, twin to the one we know,
the molten wreath, the nest, the fire in the metal drum.
Around that fire star, ore and origin of being, iron souls sit cross-legged in a circle.
Do they reincarnate? We don’t really know.
All that terrible softness up there, the squishy wet matter, vacuity of blue.
Around that open fire, they tell stories about us, one more unbelievable than the other.
—Submitted on 10/15/2022
Deborah Gorlin is the author of Open Fire (Bauhan Publishing, forthcoming), as well as of the prize-winning poetry collections Bodily Course (White Pine Press, 1997) and Life of the Garment (Bauhan Publishing, 2015). Her poems have appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Bomb, New England Review, and Prairie Schooner, among others. Emerita co-director of the Writing Program at Hampshire College, she served for many years as a poetry editor at The Massachusetts Review.
Editor’s Note: The series title Flush Left refers to the fact that, due to our limited WordPress skills, we are only considering poems that are flush left. Poems already in our Submittable queue that have simple non-flush-left formatting may be considered for publication.
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