(DIS)AMBIGUATION
By Sarah Kohrs
(DIS)AMBIGUATION
It began with the forgetting.
Sunlight sparked off keys
Dangling eye-level near the door;
Yet I walked right by and had
To come back again when
The car remained silent
Despite being helmed.
Winter winds (like how cows
With their back-itch)
Rub against knurled trees
Shivering— illuminated—
Casually denuded —and
I wonder why human skins’
Sloughings off happen so
Gradually (like holiday
Gatherings that yield oohs and aahs
At all the inches grown).
But those ticking seconds
Deter such revel -ations.
It takes accumulating snapshots or
Those annual pencil marks
Rising up a door jamb
To create a unique key
For measuring our re-
Bound from gravity.
And yet, there’s all that for-
Getting. The pre- sent is
Perpetual; but so, too, are we
Perpetually declining while
Wrangling with the past.
We’re forgotten, forgetting.
MÜLLERIAN MIMICRY
Unstable and so tire,d
desire to retire, re-
turn and [capture
the motivation for re-
juvenation] / weariness
in the marrow, really.
A caterpillar amble…s
catapults like capillaries
sp-i-der-webb-ing
very close to Varicose
as varixed as rippled
mtn ridges or the shellwork
of a mollusk, missing
not quite (inside the pearl-
ized variety), but as in-
tricate in form as the
wings that are formed
on a Viceroy—mimicker
of what has come, what is
now, what will be. Something
in{side or to the side} of you /
of me / of humanity…
aposematic // apocalyptic
to a predator. Rouletted:
a black envelop sealed
with red wax ^impressed^
and a war machine, sub-
marine silhouetted,
^etched^ by a thin gold
string Ariadne dropped
haphazardly in her ab-
duction. By other standards,
^embossed^ like Braille
variegates as roving sea-
waves, SOSing against
the solid steel side.
Until it cracks,
cleaner than an unsalted
pistachio shell. The cupped
portions plunking over
into individual coracles
that maneuver for one
once. And then they’re left
to a wind, greedy e-
nough for cicada husks
as for abandoned nests
as for cocoons u n r a v e l e d
and hollow hulls wrecked
“…my own body maneuvers to-
ward molting. And yet, the caspases
never quite activate the same,
O, olive Caterpillar.”
My chrysalis fails; yet, in fading,
have I avoided life’s swift predator?
LIKE A FALLEN ANGEL
I pluck guttural heartstrings while
halation shimmers across the reflection
shivering in the stream. Moss carpets
rocks, scaled by droplets as blue as the Morpho
and as delicate, too. The wind- shield
traces the same ghost. I bend down
away from interpenetrating eyes
to placate the spasms in the butter- fly’s
wings. I imagine the grille’s imp- ression
and wonder if her ova found their way
to the epidermis of the leaf, before…
I play the part of an ultracrepi- darian,
even though my ancestors lost their wings
long before. What do I know of metamorphosis?
My chrysalis was a womb that affixed
a sheen of pallor over skin. One that gradually
sloughed off after an arrival like a sunburn.
A falling, really. Into arms meant to imprint
that first feel of love—but, gloved instead. A
world cocooned from the visceral’s glistening.
I, prone to tergiversation, pluck guttural
heartstrings, while the caterpillar, buoyed by
an ambrosia we never seem to find, seeks
kaizen. Even those controlled by Apocrita.
Even those left cupped in the palm of a hand.
About the Author:
Sarah E N Kohrs is an artist, whose poetry can also be found in Poetry from the Valley of Virginia, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, From the Depths, Virginia Literary Journal, Colere, and Claudius Speaks. SENK has a BA from The College of Wooster and a VA state teaching license. She lives in the Shenandoah Valley, where she homeschools three sons, manages The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, directs The Corhaven Graveyard, and works to kindle hope, where it’s needed most. http://senkohrs.com.
