LEAN, CHILLY (flavor added cutting away the fat)

Lean, Chilly


I prefer goose bumps on my thighs,
globes visible before a lean,
skin more 3-D and neon red
as fingertips graze, so light no prints
are left, concentric rings identifying me

as the one who knows
you like the first person who makes
a map to you.
Happy enough to find
the first fold, I’m lucky.
The rings on my fingertips
have a life of their own,
have
a way
of expanding umbrella
to the blue sky of branches,
filters of light through thick leaves

to the love I’m feeling –
decisively switchy,
curious if I
could pass for a boy, tuxedo
shirt hips blended to waist
by cummerbund.
You hold on to your center
at the fantasy,
breasts bewitching
enough to disappear
for the sake of our movie,

in which we suspend our disbelief, suspend
our briefs,
and swan our necks and legs through loops
of skin, that
defy
what is on the screen,
small or panoramic.

2006 Vermont College Packet 1

Kinda (type cast to a closure that won't dye)

Kinda

I say "kinda" a lot, lately,
lazy for “kind of,”
like how persons or poetry
are beyond type.

I know there is an industry,
sophistication
in posing letters on a page,
giving alphabets

as many lives as their readers.

From Arial to Helvetica

(flighty to Swissy,
air of flight,
cheesy of humor,
holes in my theories
of life, love, and light;
or veteran etiquette
tickling surface of erotica –
svelte
or felt)

From Bazooka to Cezanne

(sometimes faking,
of having a blast,
or shot
at wild party –
fizz of cola, or champagne,
campaign
to get attention of her across a room,
heiress of Champs de Elysses;
or hotels of Ritz, casino
cards, die and chips
tossed and stacked –
one eye on the table,
the other across the room,
at who she’d rather
toss, stack on whim of bed
and tumble)

To Serific, or Courier New
(calligraphic pattern of short,
calculated strokes,

subtle of view
in the making,
then graphic
length on skin,
depth in soul;

until, after last breath
before sleep
from exhaustion
of dip and kiss;

her dream becomes memory,
stroke
of heart pausing

eye to eye across a room)

Vagabond to Verdana

(typography of grunge,
sophisticate of graffiti --

perhaps I’ll type cast my own,
Sophia of Loren,
Tucker of Sophie,
elegance to rib-tickling ribald

like front line

confrontation)

From Verdana to dot matrix

(the way Chuck Close
turned Polaroid portraits --
pixel rather than the pen,
the brush or the chisel
into wall-sized paintings,

dotted pattern
up close, devoid
of intimacy)

From Fortuna, a look of hand-textures,

(though probably more funds to Close
than Monet’s party scenes on a lawn,
view of river bank,
trees more alive, leaves
dabs of paint,
complexion of faces
methodical in dot placement –
embracing loveliness
from a happy life
more detailed in painting
than camera.

No illusion of chameleon
lies in a photo

in the era of manipulation,
of pixel and slant.

I vary in what I want.)

To Cuckoo, then Intrepid,

(I’m attracted to bold strokes,
or watercolors wet
enough to soak through a page –

fatten up a journal
like it had a life,

never for lack of meat
or drink –

wet dreams

sustenance of getting on,
riding a train
to the next town

or mound,

hungry all the time.)

2006 Vermont College / Melody Berning

(NOT) A VILLAINELLE (PROPER) FOR V. L.

(NOT) A VILLAINELLE (PROPER) FOR V.L.

"My idea of painting the perfect painting is one that captivates the viewer (and) no matter how far you walk away from it, it pulls you back like a magnet and won't let you go." – V. L. Cox


“They’re in my DNA,” she says of the circles.
They look like handmade wedding bands,
gold or silver wrought by the slam, miracle

of a hammer after the glow of a heated rod
reaches intensity for perfect strike, hands
for embrace of a lover, strokes given a nod

by a spirit in extraterrestrial Nebula. She translates
what can’t be explained, canvas plane
almost 3-D, reds off the prism. She waits

patiently, has the good fortune to feel her canvas,
its paints a bloodline to her. The viewer,
hypnotized by the ironically abstract, trusts

her intuitive mix of paints. If only a few stir
in the sensuality of how the color of rust
perfects a rush, she says she just can’t live without her.

Or, is it I exchange her for it, a painting’s lust-
re, her simpler truth of drawing circles as a child,
her beginnings circular, broader to embrace, just

the way it was, and is. I like the symbolic that’s wild.
Her paint on canvas like moist on skin,
I just can’t live without it. I’d walk down another aisle,

a dimension of V. L., villainelles and sestin-
as on colors for my six senses, synapses a blend,
overlap of sight, sound, touch, smell, taste, the sixth between

them all, where I step into a V. L. painting.
(Or does it step into me?) Captured, then opened,
it’s like her muse is given to generosity. There’s such a thing

as a villanelle proper. It’s not in my pen.
Colors splendid when a galaxy explodes, or stings,
like strings of lightning, only a V.L. can tell when

perfection meets, then melts, makes a painting like kin,
and a lover paint in pant, echoes to the viewer ring-
ing in her own circles, praying, "Don’t stop her!" Then,

she clicks the icon for save, ponders, "Will this be sent?"

Melody Berning (2006)