Haere mai:
I’ve anticipated your soul-deep
craw. Stewed pork bones and potatoes
to tender verging on cream. Sent the kids,
brown bodies sliding between the breeze,
to gather more puha from the fenceline.
Sonchus oleraceus: slides from the tongue
into the boil just long enough to soften
the cellulose, give the broth enough bite
to open the palate, throw windows wide
on sense. To bathe you in steam thick
as the threshold we cross between words.
E noho:
I see hunger squirm beneath
your skin. Break bread. Dip it in butter
heavy as afterbirth. Let the excess glide
across your tongue, drop
into the well of appetite, filled with milk
fresh from the coupled Void. Sidle toward
the breast. Press between her skin and his.
Join the sextuplet gods waiting to suckle,
mouths wide against emptiness,
hunger sliding between lips chapped
from too long in the womb €”
ora mate ora mate ora
Ply your flesh
in this orgy of mythologies. Mix spittle
with the grammar of desire
shorn from Adam’s side. Slip on
this red clay like spirit slips on nakedness.
An infant its mother’s breast. Meaning,
the itch always just out of reach. Slide
from this amniotic tide into the metaphor
christened body. Meaning movement.
Meaning legion. Meaning drink
from this cup and we’ll help you forget to
breathe.
______________________________________________________________
Definitions (from MÄori Dictionary Online: http://www.maoridictionary.co.nz/):
Te Kore (pronounced €œteh KO-reh €): (n.) realm of potential being, The Void.
Haere Mai (pronounced €œHI-reh MY €): (interjection) €œCome here! € or €œWelcome! €; a greeting.
E noho (pronounced €œEH no-HO €): (v.) sit, stay, remain, settle, dwell, live, inhabit, reside.
Ora (pronounced €œOH-ruh €): (stative) be alive, well, safe, cured, recovered, healthy, fit; the principle of life.
Mate (pronounced €œMAH-teh €): (stative) be dead, sick, ill, ailing, overcome, beaten, defeated, in want of, lacking, overcome, deeply in love; the principle of death.
______________________________________________________________
Tyler Chadwick lives in Idaho with his wife, their three daughters, and their Miniature Schnauzer. His poetry has appeared in Metaphor, Dialogue, Irreantum, Salome Magazine, Black Rock & Sage, and on WIZ (here and here) and AMV (here and here) and many of his poems and his Mormon Poetry Project can be found on his personal blog.
*Non-contest submission*
Wilderness Interface Zone 
The language of this poem places me in a cave, gazing into depths of consciousness.
LikeLike
Your poetry is multi-layered, rich. This poem is one that begs several readings, to marinate in the words, the images, the story.
Where are you published (I imagine several places)? And do you have your own poetry collection for sale (if not yet, when?).
I read a lot of poetry, online and in print. A ton of crap is out there, also some middlers (I may be included in that sad lot), and then the cream at the top of the poetry chain. You, sir, are in the cream at the top. Yeow.
LikeLike
Thanks for the generous appraisal, Terresa. I especially like your word, “marinate.” Very rich with connotations, which is what I hope to accomplish, in part, with my poetry: to connote, to open possibilities and connections in readers’ minds, emotions, lives, and relationships beyond those we generally only touch upon in our surface interactions with the world.
As for my publishing credits, you can find some of them in the links in my bio beneath this poem. You can also find a range of poems in various of states of finish on my personal blog (also linked to in my bio, though I know you’ve been there before). The first poem I published is here: https://dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V39N03_160.pdf. And here is a link to my poem that won the 2009 Ford Swetnam Poetry Award: http://www.isu.edu/blackrock/pdf/brs2009.pdf#Swetnam. (I’m allowed to toot my own horn, here, aren’t I, Patricia? 😉
As for a collection, well, I’m still amassing enough poems to put one together, a difficult task to undertake in the midst of raising kids, working, and doing doctoral work. But I am amassing. And I’ll be sure to let you know when that mass of language enters the world in one collected form or another…
LikeLike
As for you, Patricia: is that cave Platonic or no?
LikeLike
HaHaHaHaHa! Sharp, Tyler.
I think I’ll fall back on the philosopher’s answer: Yes–and no.
But I think mostly … no, uh-uh.
I’ll have to think over whether or not Platonic caves are even possible in today’s social environs. Plato’s words suggest that in his time only men were chained in parabolic caves.
LikeLike