Corinne isn’t really on Instagram anymore, but this is how we connected: pouring our little hearts out into this app until we became friends a couple years ago around this time, after a chat about some #AdventWord posts I’d made. Since then, we’ve worked together on a couple of things, including the coolest battle vest you’ve ever seen and that gorgeous set of portraits that David took for @inconjunct. Though I’ve known her primarily as a visual artist, I’m touched and honored to share Corinne’s moving poetry in the next three posts:
WILDERNESS by @cascadiacore
Once a wolf swallowed me, and
carried me in his belly
toward the lonesome edge of the world.
I didn’t write a poem for
seven years. escaping just
twice or thrice – I saw my captive
his teeth were on fire, rotting
and searing with loneliness.
frost heaves, splintering from his bones-
it was dark much of the time
I became black bile, my screams
avalanches, my tears cold stars
As dreams do in the purple
hours- those years spiraled away
Like dust devils across plains.
Stoney-eyed, we watch them from
The window, washing dishes
Wilderness banging on the door.
STRANGER by @cascadiacore
After some time absent, I seem to be in a body again-
It’s flabby and fragile, my back hurts,
and my hands as well.
It’s a high maintenance body, neurotic even,
like a rescue dog.
Sometimes my mouth moves and I can’t stop it.
Sometimes I cry when I lose things, or for no reason.
It indulges in little rituals,
like crossing the street in a certain way,
it likes trying on three outfits when it gets dressed-
It never matches its socks and,
it showers less and less.
I’m a little unknown to me yet-
Like I got remodeled and I didn’t know it.
Like a new neighborhood
with its own idiosyncrasies and perils-
A grocery store, or a pharmacy,
where nothing is where it ought to be-
An old house, vacant and dusty,
gardens overgrown, its studs unexamined-
I can’t tell if I’m a tear down yet,
uncertain.
BELOVED by @cascadiacore
In 1997- it was easy to love.
We loved the woodpeckers by the kitchen window,
our tadpoles- captive in jars and rusty wheelbarrows,
the wild kittens in the neighbor’s barns,
the bats, diving through thick twilight.
It was a darker and quieter planet-
my uncle brought his telescope to town,
in the soccer field, the neighbors gathered-
we marveled at Hale-Bopp, for the first and last time-
my parents held my unwrinkled hands,
and we knew nothing of melting glaciers,
or 9/11, or what fate was held behind his back, just for us.
I felt beloved and loved everything.
It was easy to love.