Poem 302 ± April 1, 2016

Mariel Alonzo
on pork and camellia

as if by cutting the meat
you release its flowers—

frail parallel lines
leaping through

a cliff & graze
at sedimentation

crashing lightweight
on plastic chopping

boards—hymn of fracture
wings, quiet

pornography of marble
pushed into

a grinder—
whine & gristle
of gunmetal
& mechanic

song of pre-germination,
see the veins

of a hummingbird’s jaw
bulge, nectar sluicing

through its hollow—

behind the knees, soft
armpit & elbow

in pulse,
stretch marks betraying
ripeness

as each tendril claws
to form a nest,
peppered & salted

& palmed, laid
to rest in antiquity

tattooing prisons
on flesh,
a blooming

to baroque petals
of rain, unsalted, as it hits

the murk of flood, hissing,
how quick you took
me to heaven

and left me there.

 

Mariel Annarose Nicole AlonzoMariel Alonzo’s work has appeared in SoftblowToasted CheeseTower JournalSanta Clara Reviewblackmail press, and other journals. Her poem “On Pork & Camellia” was selected by Tarifa Faizullah as an Honorable Mention for the 2015 Adroit Prize for Poetry.  Mariel was a finalist for the 2015 Oxford Brookes International Poetry Contest and the 2015 Winter Tangerine Awards. She hails from Davao, Philippines.

This poem appeared in The Adroit Journal.