Denise Rae Summers
RED SILT AND SEDIMENT
Red silt and sediment
The gathered rust of tapered centuries
Where weakly crumbled canyon clay
Had turned to mud when there was water there
Then it dried to dust
Along which treads
A faceless charcoal pencil-sketch wanderer
Erased at the edges
Indistinguishably gray
Her travels have kicked up
And crusted onto her
The bottom layer of the valley
And the woman
Are blended inextricably
The distant hazy view imagines
A moment of pause
A glance to the sun
Whose highest heat is visible today
Whose rippled sweat is dripping up
From out of dry clay earth
The sun who sees what she cannot
The path moves only onward
Never up
You yell for her
But it is too far to hear echoes
Searching out the sky
A numinous expansive blue
Divinity infused
That finds its way inside her chest
And takes up space
Pressures the heart, splits ribs apart
Petrifies her breath
And almost inadvertently she sees
Your peering face
As indistinct to her as she is gray
And so she knows there's someone at the top
And so she knows she cannot stop
Onward down eternal winding miles
WHEN GOD WAS A WOMAN
Let us start from the beginning
When all had beauty...
When GOD was a woman
When her water did break she awoke
By surprise to even herself
She began swimming and giving birth
To the alluring ocean of chaos, born
Blood flowing to show the beauty sown
No which way was up, but all the same
No over and underworld to blame
Let us start from the beginning
When all had beauty...
When GOD was a woman
When walking alone in the darkness
She cooed up the cosmos
She laid out the stars in hot spit
Licking her fingers, she smirked
Sparks flew out lighting her work
This was it, the ultimate space
She said, “Beauty suits this place”
Let us start from the beginning
When all had beauty…
When GOD was a woman
When restless in blue water after delivery
The blood had thinned with cool
She breathed a sigh straight up
Out of the water into the sky
Wide and still blue reflections
And there it was a place for air
Perhaps calm creatures could thrive there
Let us start from the beginning
When all had beauty...
When GOD was a woman
When she peeled off her skin
She smiled with wit, succulent and fruitful
The epidermis with fine hairs
She lay soft ground for creatures
With soft feet to walk upon
The under-layer growing the tissue
Needed to sustain green gardens above
Let us start from the beginning
When all had beauty…
When GOD was a woman
When she thought not-so-hard to herself,
She said, “Fuck it” and with ease
She made all creatures equal Pulling long hairs from temples
People were just people, animals too
With different parts, all the same heart
Roaming the earth as one pulse thumping
All with the same heart…
But that was the beginning.
SLOSH METHOD
Cold darkness soaking clouds
Pick the deep seeding
Gradual trickle release
Crouch over dull city glow
Muffled baby crying
Dogs howling moonlight to nowhere
Abrupt chaos in daily chore
A calm melts faces clean off
Mud sliding sideways framed
Escape prosaic breath mundane
Sling universal truth in jest
Drip patterns of ceiling’s wake
Pour out affection or infection
Sell your lost dreams
To sicken the method
The paradise confessing
The paradox undressing
When the cold is burning
The darkness enlightens
Skin bags breathing
Beneath the layers drenched
Grow what is left to accord
Denise "Nisi" Rae Summers is a poet, freelancer, and multi-media creative human situated in Los Angeles. She is the founder, curator, and editor-in-chief of the poetry, arts, and culture mag/zine (the) curious nothing (‘heard of it?).
On other days, she observes and reports the wake and woes of the world via pot, pen, lens, paint, or modge podge.
Follow Nisi on IG: @nisipoesia.
Find more poetry from issue #1, available in print and digital.