Broken Chromosomes

after the drawing Glyphographic by G. W. Bot, 2006

Kedumba Gallery

 

Like a flood plain after deluge

these vermiculate glyphs lie flattened

trying to decipher the code of their own 

genome. Like runes spread across the table,

handwriting after drink taken

or lightning strike, 

the message

of these shredded nerves leans with the tide.

Dance with me, they say, writhe 

in symmetry with the thwarted rivers,

each tributary leeching into paper

like the cilium affixing threadworms 

in primordial silt. These faultlines

caught under a microscope 

see how they burrow in 

like mangrove roots swaying 

after their first breath.

 
https://kedumba.org.au/artist/gw-bot/

 

 

 

Pressed Flower

 

Opening those Collected Works

I did not find the dried flower like a rare 

stamp from long ago, but the frozen 

 

drama of the huntsman’s flattened leg 

and a stain suggesting the Collected Works

had been employed with more zeal 

 

and less harmony than the collector 

envisaged. Each follicle perfectly preserved

like the twisted stem of a dandelion

 

or a stone age ant in amber, clues 

for the way life used to be, fully limbed, 

flowering between the hallowed pages.