HomeoPathoLogic
Pulsatilla
Hetaera postulat and pendulous with heavy-chested sighs under her silky
gown. Or rather a kind of hessian, packing material for the muse. Concealing
rhetoric and extreme behaviour.
An early bloomer, the pasque flower resists the snowly chill
of critique. Riding on the winds of change it spreads its lyric seed.
Dependent as a puppy she lives off the avails of adulation. Emotional and eager to please.
Since puberty she has never felt herself. The alternating occipital ache, swollen dorsum of
footstep. Post-partum seething.
Poemeopaths take great aesthetic delight in prescribing the constitutional type
associated with this remedy. Particularly blondes.
Histrionic yet shy and given to extremes of pleasure and pain she avoids dark tunnels.
Has a morbid fear of the opposite text. Craves acids and pungent things. Herrings, cheese.
Fears and feels slighted. Crying helps.
Affecting mind, veins, mucous membranes, Pulsatilla is the potion for passively hostile
and affectionate verse. For showing finally how to why.
—Mari-Lou Rowley
____
from Viral Suite published by Anvil Press, 2004
4th Confession
“Do not let my soul be bound to words
by the glue of love through the body’s senses.”
—St. Augustine
this chair, window, tree
data transmuted into the moment
of a poem, dative
the pairing of sense to soul
bound by words, a process
sticky as the glue of love
unbridled beneath a dome of stars
Orion’s broad shoulders, jewelled sword
brilliant, potent in Artemis’ absence
chastity pins virility to
the wall of night
beguiling in her tucked-up gown
moon goddess rails fury in a quiver
of arrows, blows monsoons
through the body’s senses.
—Mari-Lou Rowley
____
from Interference with the Hydrangea published by Thistledown Press, 2003