Portrait at Faiyum

 

she contemplates a different world
and balances her mind
between hot clamor days
and dark darker darkest tomb

poses for a mummy portrait
needful for her afterlife
artist laid upon a plank
with warm lumined beeswax strokes
catching her alive and pensive

she foresees her body wrappings
redolent with almond oil, palm wine
and pine resin for a sealing

mourns a desiccated body, natron shriveled
bereft of brain and liver…womb
identities … all canopic jarred to ancillary

tastes bitterness at the thought
of priests touching still-ed magic
from the even tempo of her heart

and now her pulse and sweat
and tear washed eyes
and eyes…and eyes

see through from being
and a slipping plane to plane

 

Bonnie Marshall

Artist Unknown
Woman’s Mummy Portrait, 70 AD
Hawara, Faiyum (Fayum) Basin

mea culpa

nubbin teeth budded in my pink mouth
enough for me to chew bland mush my
giants spooned to me for nourishment;
damn them…for I deep needed tart lemon
sour pickle…sweet vanilla on my tongue

 
their Santa lies transmogrified wonder
to fat laps fake beards…fly specked nasty
so abhorrent even outstretched fingers
on a Sistine ceiling cannot heal my wound

 
and I regret…regret…oh damn me;
my malnourished words moistened
beige I…now enormous with their
power…I dutiful and diligent…slip
pale listless to the innocent

 
Bonnie Marshall

Art by Claude Monet

 

Whispers In the Fine Print

 

1.

Always… it comes down to
how badly we could be hurt
by whispers in the fine print.

2.

What the hell…
we balance bright promise,
pain ease, smile…to brush away
side effects possible dire…grim
repercussions for a now relief.

3.

Deus ex machina…
–ex. Snow coughed up coma
apple when her coffin bearer tripped–
can’t be trusted, for we’re on our own.
–ex. Dorothy looked behind curtains,
Gretel baked a raving cannibal…and
Cinderella…for a warning… pigeon
blinded her bloody footed sisters
against their duplicity.

4.

Happily ever after…nebulous it
drifts…sleeps…dreams within us.
Mirror, mirror on the wall
who’s the fairest we can be
with one weird trick…the secret they
always they…those gods whispering
in machinery…want us to know
might cost us in the fine print.

 

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by theycallmeteddy

 

my soul is dressed in motley

with blasphemy of thought inside to out
I shall wear motley on my soul to hide fool
there in my brain, where absorbed in vanity
it is a clown…my soul…a jester…marionette
or a mime awareness hiding there…intangible

my soul is acrobat through air caparisoned
in skin-tight diamante…soft leather shoes
to better grip the line…hands limed to grasp
a constant swinging bar

my soul is tissue white…as pierrot pirouette,
its friend the moon, it pines for solitude…or as
marionette attached to life, it mimics amplitude,
though sometimes it fades diaphanous to smoke

my soul is mime…its whiteface mirrors moment me
in living archetype, and I sense poseur mystery in
the knowing there behind its stoic mask

my soul is clown…floppy shoes and baggy pants
as immature it pedals circles on a tiny trike
playing slapstick to the crowd…it is costumed
yellow black orange white…big red nose and
smiling mouth kept simple by design all for
distance viewing…not to be seen up close
as that might frighten children

though…perhaps my soul is merely scabbed birth
tear…and such memory itches to be scratched…yet
I’ll not peel the motley, for scarring might take place

 

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by Akzhana Abdali

For Their Deserving Notions

she told me…
she…being my Mother…one day at Church…
never to place a book upon a Holy Bible
and her caveat stays me…to this day,
though not like The Ten Commandments
that I should not break…for the No Book
on Top caution was Her bent, not mine

he told me…
he…being a law student Prince from Africa
that his Father…the Kisi tribal King…told him
his oath on a bible in a British court was illegal
for it’s someone else’s foreign sacred thought
yet…a Human Blood Oath…now That to him
was Holy…not indifferent like a beer oath, or
one sworn with chicken blood, depending
as they did, upon individual intent

on occasion when I shelve my Books
aged faintly aromatic vanilla almond hay,
the ones I cherish near me place to place…
their sweet fragrance on occasion keys my
Saturday remembrance of Mother…me…on
Communion Service duty in a damp Church
basement breaking shortbread wafers onto
silver plated trays…and pouring  grape juice
into tiny plastic cups

I drank the Blood…I ate the Body

my Mother banished me

 

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by Welsh Dragon