Aditi Machado
Speeches, Minor
Something inwardly:
infinite rose
peeled & bliss.
I walk as if moving will evaporate as if scent.
Discomfort moves in the body like discourse
between sea & moor:
the bad weather turns terminal.
I think toward the sky & the bellies of underground creatures. This makes
a dense paragraph of mist. Inside mist what you see is neither truth nor
untruth but discussion rising into dissolution.
« In a kernel I admit
I am deeply
but have not yet found
my apathy. »
Sun bounces off railway tracks:
ancient ritual of geometry.
By the tracks opens a flower:
refrain.
The flower is general & particular & ancient.
It satiates the erasure of a palm.
There is richness in saying everything we know.
There is richness in saying everything, we know.
The flower has opened a disparity in the earth
that is granular: refrain.
In the medial moments like a closing couplet I say one thing & then
another into a coliseum or seashell:
« I think of feeling as an act of purity. That I wind through
cornfields & feel rustlings is incalculable. Though I have
acted out of purity I have not felt thought. Thought is not
open to me though I sense it from the edge of a field
watching the horses and the horses’ masters. I have not
been a slave to kindness. I watch horizons like blades. I
watch the gorgeous animal of movement & its whip. I
watch the gorgeous plant of movement & its whip. I
cannot tell time without the whip. »
The whole village is here, minus its people.
Aditi Machado's poetry is forthcoming or has recently appeared in Volt, Witness, webConjunctions, The Offending Adam, and elsewhere. She edits poetry in translation for Asymptote and is working on her dissertation at the University of Denver.