LEE POSNA

 

A Transept Rose and Five Long Lancet Windows

Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere, 
Glows in the fruits 
Shelley 

 
It glows in fruits 
mint sunbeams action 
like bloodshine 
from an ear 
 
Cup in your withered hand 
this oblong double-kiwifruit 
alone in high noon sun- 
pew in Gothic cathedral light of 
greens creams reds blues black 
glass transept rose’s 
fleurs-de-lis and fleurs du mal: 
unbroken sun makes an 
edifice of duration 
 
Squeeze the rock- 
hard, unripe kiwifruit 
 
  1 
Make it glow in blood- 
red mosaic light of 
Nasser who, with a pestle, without 
expression, grinds coriander seeds 
into lion-powder 
 
  2 
Glow red Ruth Western 
Saharan refugee red Ruth through 
garnet glass; through it 
pours white sun through red glass 
a cut red-glass mosaic sun: 
sun through sun; same sun, greater 
heat, different corn, brighter 
fruit, different 
nightingale sings same 
wormholes 
 
  3 
Trumpet those 
roses Netanyahu 
 
Shine, showboat down 
that Gaza Strip 6pm July light- 
splintered whale-road into the garden 
of watched sleep 
 
Glow fruit, glow 
health, glow jawbone of an ass snow-blind 
light like subtractive health- 
bright nuclear 
jawbone of a clown 
 
  4 
The hard kiwifruit will give you 
health, but not yet; cut 
off from the flow 
of history; the sun’s 
self-identical fruitblood floods 
fruit with health, a health 
that attracts and propagates, attracts 
to propagate; seeds many 
and spread as sands of 
the sea shifting deep dunes a deep 
health underlies, total health deeper 
than change; along your neck 
and left shoulder Ben-Gurin’s 
watery handlight ultra- 
marine 
 
  5 
Kiwifruit harder than seas 
of Ostfront bones pricking 
up through snow, textured 
crunchy snow and brittle 
snowed bones’ dead light 
freezing over you spilling 
over the pew unbroken as if frozen; 
history like a field of identical snowflakes 
with no one there to see it

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lee Posna grew up in New Jersey and lives with his wife, poet Therese Lloyd, in Paekakariki. He’s very happy to be part of the Wellington writing community.

A Trancept Rose and Five Long Lancet Windows is an ekphrastic poem based on an imaginary stained glass window with six panels — each section of the poem is a window portraying conflations of biblical and 20th century figures. The epigraph is from Shelley’s vision of a utopian future in his early poem ‘Queen Mab’.