“Landmarks don’t fully explain themselves, but they offer a reference point that can be shared.” — John Berger, Fellow Prisoners, 2011.
The photo series is titled, “A Point in Time.”
The accompanying poem is titled, “Cranks.”
CRANKS
This is a Cattle Guard.
this is a pen.
it cleaves the enclosure; is pervious &
permeates the fractured border of consensus reality.
between this pen and the way station is
a detention center and a township promenade which floods
when it rains; siren lights mark the bridge before barbed wire.
deer leap, seeds fly, cottonwoods fall and nothing separates this.
what is useful about prairie paths?
they wind.
Rail Way
sleep in cast block labor shanty
renovated yet still settled in
the same place; a yard a
way from tied and tire tracks.
few years back a coal train keeled
over along Kaw River. this energy
costs too, cattle cars full of electric
vehicles, mine`d commodity, cargo.
droning whistle passengers a wake;
each rail cross inters a trail of steel
stakes trembling,
the price of the ticket.
Depth Perception
distance
flattens
dimension immersion
implicates bodies
grass grove ripples
hip-deep moving
breath through bronchi,
slanted lines, daily
extinctions; geologic
yawn lays bare
bone keeps memory
layers perpetual grief
deposits
the winds hold
as they compel, surrender &
envelope a current curtaining
time told by asterism, migratory
volume, cloud shape, softened step;
just as the tree parts the air, our nature confluences.
Ocean
here is the ocean peeking up from the limestone!
boats pass over head, high prairie blue as far as the i
can see. beyond magnifying sun, the stars get a good look
at you; the enormity of paradise; farm water running out;
our aerobic ancestors. there are many ways because the one
water is all.
Neighbors
connection dis-spells fear
what’s our commonality? the underground bleeding
heart land.
every season, a supplanter dies back, reveals
earth openings. hear the insects vibrate to one another
from invisible places?
i cross wire fences as in dream to visit my friends. love ways circulate
aster, echinacea, sunflower, sumac, mullein, indigo, clover, milkweed. i give vines berth,
but human being
medicine roots trickle far
wide and beneath my soles. a ground
cascade marking water mirrors
the sky’s drinking gourd.
who that
poet
gyal
walking
down
the road
who visits
the grave in the ghost?
Correspondence
matfield green, flint hills. juneteenth, solstice.
south windowsill: glass, cut herbs and squash flowers from home, water.
hemisphere tilts back to the depths; the last light calls in our kindred—
flora, fauna, fowl, spirits, entities, ancestors—love, to companion us there.
from the rocking chair, i focus my far sight and depart into dense grass, seek clear
water and contour my spine along fossilized slopes. how many are denied this sky?
Scorpius
throat tingling lightning storm to the east, nothing on radar. how far the light reaches
such that the clouds bear no thunder?
turkey vultures kettle, coyotes sing, and lightning bugs begin to dance. the
atmosphere oscillates, star-dense waves and variable moon tide.
as i ponder the night, a striped bark scorpion emerges from umber floors. i see stars
without glasses. they are big opaque circles; nevertheless, i can find my way north.
Texts
Two Old Women (1993)
Anam Ċara (1997)
Touch the Earth (1971)
Altars of Unhewn Stone (1987)
PrairyErth (1991)
Folks
thank you, prairie, all who compose and inhabit you. what a generous gift,
the invitation to transform.
this town a quilt block, and i a stitch. thank you for saturday school circle dance,
for your porches and archives.
cross ties: the path doesn’t follow the map, the map follows the path.
meadowlark: music is a note following a feeling following a note.
limestone: to move at the pace of stepping stones, first reach back to move forward.
crops: what you do not give, you cannot gather.
the year tornado alley left
the dust bowl in a blaze of fire
i commit to memory.
joys and concerns,
dreams and nightmares,
another prairie portal, poem
process for profound futuring.
rachel j. atakpa is and changes. atakpa was raised in a rural railroad town, works contiguous rivers, and loves the land. a liver in afterlives, seer between seas, and poet for possibility, rae reads, w/rites, and sows. atakpa’s writing appears at Poetry Society of America, fifth wheel press, Contemporary Verse 2, Berkeley Poetry Review, and elsewhere. atakpa’s multimedia installation art-works have been exhibited at Charlotte Street Foundation, KCAI Artspace, and the Lawrence Arts Center. rae’s practice is of the web: iridescent, ecosomatic, spacecraft.