Catherine McGuire

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT

The Glassblower's Tale

My face drinks the heat
from the gloryhole
like a demon made for Hell.
No fainting novice, I
poke the silica shimmy
the molten orange sea whose breath
can melt acrylic clothes to your skin.

My blowpipe lifts a gather of glass
on its tip, burning saffron bud.
I twirl the rod at the pace of viscous honey
flowing. This is where no theory counts;
it’s all in the dance—
the willingness to go along, lend myself
to red heat and lavaflow
follow the transformation;
to guide with my breath.

Knowing when to breathe life into the lump—
not so easily taught! But once you have it,
the joy of the bubble becomes
intoxicating, irresistable.
And so it was: I could not resist
seeing them glow with scarlet lust
breathing my bubble of love around them
each one a fire flower, my only,
until the cooling left a brittle shell
and my desire searched the flames again.

Catherine McGuire

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Fear of Losing My Soul

It’s not a sudden strike,
a single-pointed spear,
more like vines overgrown
whose roots strangle the soil,
whose tendrils ease themselves
into a labyrinth of greed.

By the time a sense of danger stirs,
the path is nearly lost—a thicket
of doubt where no slanting light
gives direction or hope.

Heroic efforts only shred the mass
into smaller pieces, each
with its own weedy strength.
What is needed is quiet care,
to slip from the tangle and leave
the vine to embrace itself.

Catherine McGuire

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT

For the 21st Century: Elegy on Six Monitors

Grainy pixels coalesce and flow.
En-framed: ten feet of hall, immortalized
in Dada brilliance, endless, empty, now
saved to disk. Another screen espies
grayscale daisies, chessboard of weeds;
squad of eight horsepower pawns checked,
rusting door locks, relict of keys.
A third scans sky like an oily wreck:
slimy clouds roil and snake a sun
catacombed perpetually behind steel ranks—
towers fractaled; cracks that blossom
at the wind’s insistence. A fourth is blank.
A fifth is fuzz. The last screen’s frozen and
shows lobes of smoke, door handle, one hand.