Video Valentine by Adam K. K. Figueira

Adam writes of this video Valentine that he made it for his “wife and (if the latest ultrasound is correct) five daughters …   I think it fits your theme this month, and the connection to nature should be obvious.”
________________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________

Adam K. K. Figueira was born to the east of where he lives now, but then went west, and back towards the middle again. He doesn’t see himself as a figure of any importance, but he likes to watch, make, and write about films, particularly LDS films. His greatest achievements are all girls, and that doesn’t appear to be changing in the foreseeable future. Adam’s work is available to read and/or watch at his blog, Anew; Toward an LDS Cinema, the other blog he writes for; his YouTube channel; and his professional site, adamkk.com.

Advertisement

Guest Post: “On Stand of Trees,” by Tyler Chadwick

Stand of Trees (by J. Kirk Richards)

I’ve been neglecting what it takes
to piece together dawn from old
snapshots and reminiscence faded
as the blush from Adam’s skin

when God’s question stunned
the garden and he slipped with Eve into
the shadow of God’s voice, their shame
a stand of trees backlit by cherubim

come hounds a-bay to flush them into
death, sin, recognition, solitude,
a blood-drunk field mantle deep with sweat
and sorrow, soil thick with the afterbirth

of myth and tectonic histories, pieces
of a puzzle that shift in bed as I
try to number them one, two, three,
no, one, two… one

edges ragged as the blanket Cain has
carried since Eve weaned him from the teat
and he found his thumb to replace it,
but not enough to fill his hunger, not

enough to keep serpents from burrowing
into his need, from shedding that rag
like yesterday’s skin, from slipping him
the switchblade he used to quarter the fruit

he knew had ripened in Mother’s womb,
the harvest he’ll never find as he works
his spittle and excrement field into bodies
with his hands red as stygian clay.

_____________________________________________________________

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.  

Be sure to click into the link at the head of the post to see the inspiration for Tyler’s poem, J. Kirk Richards’ painting, “Stand of Trees.”

Landscape, with Livestock

(On €œPond at Thompson’s Station € by J. Kirk Richards)

by Tyler Chadwick

The sun has been misplaced.
Or, if you’d like to get more
Biblical, it’s returned

to the dove’s abyss €”or
was that Milton? I can’t be sure
as I dance so near the beginning

with words so supple they
bend into themselves until
only the landscape remains:

the field flushed white, hills
seduced into bed
by cloud vapor so thin it will

barely last past the break of day,
the trees an erratic screen
against the sudden emptiness.

Consumed in association,
their teeth tight to the grass,
the livestock nearest the water’s

point of clarity absorb this light
in slight movements of   jaw and
tongue, slowing the arc of day
 
as it reaches to nest
in the foreground
of this slowly digested vale.

 

Find more Tyler here.