- Lisa Ciccarello - H_NGM_N #11 - H_NGM_N: an online journal & small press
Preface: I am watching you move in the temple made of sand. It’s a s…
Maybe Lisa Ciccarello was born in a cave. Or in the dark. Or maybe she was born inside a storm cloud, just before the storm. Somewhere most people would claim inauspicious. But her poems make clear, it was an auspicious darkness. It is a darkness operating at all levels in her poetry. In this poem, she puts the reader between the grammars of interrogation and declaration. “You” should be questioning all that takes place here, but questions are not really an option. Why are you at a temple. Why would you ask. What keeps the palace closed to “you.” Such is the nature of Ciccarello’s position in this world of the poem.
It makes me think of Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s work. That heavy, inescapable tone that make you feel you swallowed graphite. Is this what fantasy is like. Is this all we have left to face. I don’t want to leave Ciccarello’s poem, even with the heavy tone, even with her repeating circumstances, because I always feel that this kind of poem must end in resolution. Then Ciccarello shows how unnecessary resolution is.
