AN ORGY IS A PUBLIC PRAYER
for Dylan Seaward-Salvati
Where I participate naked or fully
Clothed, even my hair switched
To an ON/OFF current.
I am looking for the space of real acts,
Not thoughts or even speech, but a cue.
Later: an exit. Certainly no map.
A white fabric with invisible seams stitches
Us into the now
(“Near” is not “Together”)
Volumic forms dash along a flat horizontal plain
Gestures, hands, kneeling, torso,
Pressed inside a vitality.
A bursting where my chest and clavicle meet.
A vital wave is rolling, making everything outside
This space a neutral clearing.
No battle here can be seen
Without savage sight
Someone tells us, “After it you will walk
Differently into the green world.”
Maryam Monalisa Gharavi is a visual artist, poet, and theorist. Book publications include the poetry volume The Distancing Effect (BlazeVOX); a translation of Waly Salomão's Algaravias: Echo Chamber (Ugly Duckling Presse), nominated for a 2017 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation; and the drawing/text artist publication Apparent Horizon 2 (Bonington Gallery).