Genevieve Creedon

Sensory Deprivation

A green-lit pool in a dark room

                                                                                      the poet says it’s okay to be corny
sometimes a turquoise lagoon
                                                                                      we’re all human; orange and yellow
appears, turns purple beneath floating lanterns
                                                                                      butterflies are still beautiful
or meteors drawing confetti in midnight blue
                                                                                      even if it’s been said before
snow angels in salt are still angels
                                                                                      cotton ball clouds in the biggest diorama
encrusted in the palest blue skin
                                                                                      known to fuming minds
luminous almost in the black
                                                                                      what do you see when you open
the world for a second time
                                                                                      your sighs to the hum
of cicadas in the distance
                                                                                      deepening the sky’s own throat
beyond the swaying birches
                                                                                      as if it were possible to reach
where the fire builds slowly
                                                                                      across time to the dawn
at first and then draconically
                                                                                      to the beginning of whatever
with wings piercing the night
                                                                                      is ending now at our feet
and a sulfuric storm, pink-painted
                                                                                      frayed boots, leaving bare toes
like lady bugs, speckled at the surface
                                                                                      on the brink of a breaking,
a blossom, a blistered body
                                                                                      seeking everything
and then more

Black Mosaic
for Tye


Four-legged ballerina that you are,
you step gingerly from the arm of one
couch to the other, your paw pads
brushing my face as you plop down
with me in the afternoon sun. Belly-up,
your head on my shoulder, you close your eyes.
Chin jutting out, your white goatee lingers
between urban fashion and old man
whiskers, the accidental perfection
painted on the canvas of your black curls.
Today, your independence—this word used
for dogs who do not cuddle—is gone,
and I caress your ribs, the slender peak
of your rounded chest. Your heart beats
against my hand, hair padding my fingers
from each other. You lie as if the raging
world were at peace, and my bruised eyes
rest on the black mosaic of your nose.
Are the patterns like human finger prints?
The marks now mounted on my pupils’ walls,
your dilating lungs carbonate my mind’s trees.
Your breath assembles fragments,
moistens the air between us as you sleep:
unwitting keeper of leaves, letters, lines.

—

Genevieve Creedon is a scholar, poet, and essayist. Her writing across genres explores relational meaning-making with human, animal, and environmental others. Her work has appeared in About Place, Cider Press Review, Common Ground Review, Gyroscope Review, Narrative Northeast, and Westchester Review, among others.