Psychogeographic Map of the Exact Moment when I Knew my Father was Dead
{{Summer Bamberg, Germany}}
The moment you died I was in an 8th Century cathedral.
Four choir members came in
and started singing: soprano, alto, tenor, bass,
and I thought I heard the famed Golden Wheel--
a great star with 350 bells,
14 rays spinning around an axis
made of gilded asters.
Though I knew you would die soon,
and I’d be in a country with a 9 hour difference--
still, I thought there’d be more time--
but the hummingbird of time
hovers for only a moment.
***
Under the architrave of thousands of years of prayers,
under arches and urns darkened by censers of incense,
I knelt on a padded pew
above a crypt,
amongst the sandstone saints
and stuccoed apostles
of someone else’s religion
and I prayed.
“Is that you?”
I asked when the singing stopped,
but all was silent--
only a vibration in the air to mark their song.
Psychogeographic Map of my Visit to the Museum of Modern Art
{{San Francisco, California}}
It’s always in the eyes:
plea or pleasure.
Her breasts--
a temptation to a tryst.
Hands--
two swans
creasing the night.
Mouth--
a train wreck
waiting to happen
as though words must
twist sestinas
into villanelles.
There's defiance
in her shrug.
This shoulder
pillows a child’s head,
that shoulder
fields a lover’s sigh.
Someone’s chin’s
left a purple rose
blooming on her collarbone.
She’s a dancer
without a dress.
She’s a waitress
serving dirty martinis.
She’s a princess
lost in metal.
Eyes widened in joy--
widened in terror.
She could be a tree,
but for those eyes.
Her halo
is really a rhinestone fan.
She is screaming,
no-- she is laughing.
The thickness of paint
diffuses her furor--
binds her
into fields of color.
Her release
a seduction.
The ring
on her finger
has no hand.
She dances where strings
of mirrors hang from
fishing line like walls.
A mosaic: breasts, ass,
and a powder puff
for a pussy.
She is the thought sandwich
filling the bellies
of hunger artists everywhere.
Maria Garcia Teutsch is an award-winning poet and professor. Her newest collection, The Swallows of America will be published by Dancing Girl Press in the Fall of 2021. The Revolution Will Have its Sky, won the Minerva Rising chapbook competition, judged by the wondrous Heather McHugh. Maria is a poet, editor, educator and performance artist. She has published over 25 book/journals of poetry as editor-in-chief of the Homestead Review, published by Hartnell College in Salinas, and Ping-Pong journal of art and literature, published by the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, California. She teaches poetry and creative writing at Hartnell College as a member of their faculty. She is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Ping-Pong Free Press, and publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Poet Republik Ltd.
{{Summer Bamberg, Germany}}
The moment you died I was in an 8th Century cathedral.
Four choir members came in
and started singing: soprano, alto, tenor, bass,
and I thought I heard the famed Golden Wheel--
a great star with 350 bells,
14 rays spinning around an axis
made of gilded asters.
Though I knew you would die soon,
and I’d be in a country with a 9 hour difference--
still, I thought there’d be more time--
but the hummingbird of time
hovers for only a moment.
***
Under the architrave of thousands of years of prayers,
under arches and urns darkened by censers of incense,
I knelt on a padded pew
above a crypt,
amongst the sandstone saints
and stuccoed apostles
of someone else’s religion
and I prayed.
“Is that you?”
I asked when the singing stopped,
but all was silent--
only a vibration in the air to mark their song.
Psychogeographic Map of my Visit to the Museum of Modern Art
{{San Francisco, California}}
It’s always in the eyes:
plea or pleasure.
Her breasts--
a temptation to a tryst.
Hands--
two swans
creasing the night.
Mouth--
a train wreck
waiting to happen
as though words must
twist sestinas
into villanelles.
There's defiance
in her shrug.
This shoulder
pillows a child’s head,
that shoulder
fields a lover’s sigh.
Someone’s chin’s
left a purple rose
blooming on her collarbone.
She’s a dancer
without a dress.
She’s a waitress
serving dirty martinis.
She’s a princess
lost in metal.
Eyes widened in joy--
widened in terror.
She could be a tree,
but for those eyes.
Her halo
is really a rhinestone fan.
She is screaming,
no-- she is laughing.
The thickness of paint
diffuses her furor--
binds her
into fields of color.
Her release
a seduction.
The ring
on her finger
has no hand.
She dances where strings
of mirrors hang from
fishing line like walls.
A mosaic: breasts, ass,
and a powder puff
for a pussy.
She is the thought sandwich
filling the bellies
of hunger artists everywhere.
Maria Garcia Teutsch is an award-winning poet and professor. Her newest collection, The Swallows of America will be published by Dancing Girl Press in the Fall of 2021. The Revolution Will Have its Sky, won the Minerva Rising chapbook competition, judged by the wondrous Heather McHugh. Maria is a poet, editor, educator and performance artist. She has published over 25 book/journals of poetry as editor-in-chief of the Homestead Review, published by Hartnell College in Salinas, and Ping-Pong journal of art and literature, published by the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, California. She teaches poetry and creative writing at Hartnell College as a member of their faculty. She is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Ping-Pong Free Press, and publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Poet Republik Ltd.
