A sudden realization of coming to consciousness in darkness, surrounded by a screaming in all directions, that porcelains my flesh and concusses the back of my head, an audible ferocity of words in a language I can’t decipher

I feel bitten by his diablerie and spit out by his spleen

I make stories of the scenes that captivate hours in sun cast shadows and arachnid baiting, of vulture princes feasting on rot and viruses, and motes of dust fusing into amorphous beings phantoming a dance in the coastal breeze

I feel his stare like a stoning punishment

I want him to read the story of my lives, those living and dead, in retellings of flaws within my flesh, in the shallow and deep scars, the mutant stretch marks, in freckled constellations and portent tattoos

I won’t deny the longing and hunger for the sanguine spilled rug burns of the white room, with floor to ceiling windows that drench the wanting sex of feral psyches in sunlight

Your vulnerable neck in my grasp, your heart a delicacy to my palate, unbidden tears captivating crystal prophecies upon my hands

Solitary in form again, I watch from the window, the waves break and burn in sun phase hues, as the ghost of your voice widows at the shell of my ear, giving my head a haunting distant roar of loss and lust

I move to stand in the threshold of the door, in the realm of other, not in not out, and I star my limbs, suspended in the space of entranced or possible retreat

My celestial body becomes a wheel, slow spinning my metamorphic silk, a chrysalis of irritant effect, I take on a baroque pearl contour awaiting the splitting of life

Upon extraction of the bindings that happened my transmogrify, I haunt the house you built around thoughts of me and the wicked shape of my mouth, fevering the syllables of your name, the histrionics of your unbecoming

It’s a fine house you’ve crafted for me to haunt, bathed in dark actualization, that I decorate with tasseomancy finery and slipping candle wax, taxidermied nocturnals and minuscule houses constructed of leaves, whistling rust and framed whispers of your self-reproach

E. A. O'Connell. May 7, 2022.

{Excerpt}

The cherry trees line the stone wall of the graveyard. Within the curtain of ceaseless pink petals in ethereal flurry, azaleas in mind warping hues trumpet an electrifying aura that draws my eyes in a hummingbird frenzy. Lichen mist and moss velvet. Patinaed bronze and sangria maples. All is quiet. All is serene. Upon this landscape with a setting sun that opalesces the evening sky and imparts a glow to the new green unfurling, Death is holding his arms open in a gesture of kind…look at how time has allowed your grief to bloom…

E. A. O'Connell. May 2, 2022.

 a near kiss, framed within a coffee ring distress

and a moon phase ambush of cold saturation

a hand pushes to the glass

the world ignorant to its existence

but it pleads with me

—return my touch—

a fright of creation in monstrous hours

i breathe within the atmosphere of dream

but come to my consciousness

as a single finger taps atop my spine

a smile surfaces as my belly blooms a warmth

and in whisper i ask what kept them so long

E. A. O'Connell. April 29,. 2022

Morning Mindfulness

I think I may have befriended a sparrow…a tall and lean, brown sparrow. Whenever he perches atop the deck railing, he always does so with his back straight, making him taller than the other sparrows that I see perch all squat and plump atop overhead wires and picket fences. His lanky build calls to mind Jimmy Stewart, so perhaps there’s a name in relation that will suit him and come to voice.

So this little winged friend…I say friend, but in all reality I could be sadly mistaken, as he may very well dislike my presence on the deck and see me as an interloper who has suddenly begun invading his space…my work does keep me from fully enjoying the deck during day hours for a better part of the year, and I imagine he’s grown quite comfortable during his uninterrupted time…nevertheless, this little sparrow is not fearful of my human presence on the deck, rather he’s curious and ever so vocal. If I go outside to sit for a spell, enjoying a coffee and a book, he’ll fly above my head and land on the railing a few feet to the left of the Adirondack chair, staring at me and chirping incessantly. However, Tuesday afternoon, as I was reading a book, he flew right in front of my face…so close I could feel the breeze off his wing. He then landed on the railing, staring me down and chirping. I looked for signs of a nest or of hatchlings, but nothing to support the idea he was being territorial due to parental instincts. A crow sitting atop a shaded branch in the maple located in the yard across from the deck, hopped out onto a sunny branch and cawed thrice, causing my sparrow guest to go silent and fly away. His absence was short lived, always returning to investigate why a human is present, busying herself with prepping the deck for gardens or sweeping away leaves and pollen that collect in corners and under the bench pillows.

This morning he returned as usual, only I had opted to drink my coffee and read a book at the dining room table, my back to the open French doors that lead onto the deck…the temperate weather and cool breeze that was blowing through my home, scented with sun warmed hyacinth, tulips, and new green was too blissful to ignore…but there it was, his boisterous chirping, so I rose and stood at the door listening to him from his perch atop the frame for the ambient cafe lights. I bid him good morning, he looked in at me for a few minutes more, and then flew off. I decided in that moment to leave him blueberries for breakfast.

It’s midday and he hasn’t returned for his blueberries, but I’m hoping to find that they were enjoyed when I check on them later today. The question is, will it be the sparrow to taste of their sweetness, or Chunk Norris, the stout squirrel that daily visits the deck, leaving behind tell-tale signs of his presence, and who bides his time until summer, when he blatantly ravishes the vegetables and fruits grown in containers, only to leave in their place half-chewed peanuts still in the shell and poorly buried black walnuts.

Spring always brings with it a great many promises and possibilities that tend to carry straight through into summer. Nature and the Universe communicate in symbols, synchronicities, and parallels…and with recent events in my life bearing a weight I need to unload…I’m mindful to the sparrow’s sudden appearance and familiarity being more than just a coincidence.

E. A. O'Connell. April 14, 2022.

 A pentagon of gilded perimeter lit the hollow at the back of my eyes, a vow in the language of sacred geometry, a visual representation of the longing that emanates from my being…I hadn’t remembered falling asleep…I swear I had merely blinked…it’s usually in those moments of quiet darkness, when my world is lit by two headlights, the head on collision that doesn’t even make me flinch, I accept the crux of matter, and I escape as particles of energy and encompass a realm of parallel self…I revisit that headspace and find a phosphene hued door, the most simplistic of outlines, with the most daring of depths framed within…portals often hint at promises that may not be kept, but this one has a darkness that reaches back at me in covenant…a Möbius strip of risk and ricocheting recordings of the ambient infinite

E. A. O'Connell. March 15, 2022.

 Intermittent raindrops tap an unsteady rhythm on the skylight, pulling my focus to the grey expanse, where it lazes and melds, unveiling…

My bones are old, some days they chant war songs and steel instead of splinter, other times they hum vesper light and radiate ancestor guidance, lately they constant an unearthly echo of language absent from tongues for centuries…

I’m unheard of, with peddles engaged and released, my fingers in play, my voice a whisper exhaling incantations in phantom rings, as the shadows existing beneath the same roof, shift and shape in a melodious dance, their presence a comfort when life proves to wear heavier than their afterlife…

We conduct ourselves as strangers in all hours, but three, where a singular tear falls upon the column and bow of my lip, a baptism of virus upon host, he can’t help himself, because god goes where he wants, and I taste his apology…

I’m aware daily of the ache that’s wracked my body, and of the hurt that reminds my heart to win, and that it’s when I’m lost to the odyssey that my being happens upon the most beauty.

E. A. O'Connell. February 7, 2022.

 The sky held a promise of snow, the unphasing gray of backlit clouds, and the still of cold, that penetrates the knuckles, until the age of my storied flesh cracked, blood as red as the Japanese maple I stood beneath, trickled like blood from the hunt in a fjord of inked permanence…the maple leaves, delicate in their size, severe in their edges, a stellar inferno that captivated my mind with memories of my babies, hours old and hands star-made in my vantablack void, the rivulets of my blood that painted me feral and infected all that was bleached in my ferocity…a gilded anomaly awaits my remembrance, tucked at the back of my left ear, an errant forsythia bloom in November dormancy, a supernova of temporal echoes…dawn, in the comfort of my home’s shadows, and the haunting lure of starling murmuration, stepping outside the French doors, an infinitesimal existence beneath the astronomical undulations of hundreds of wings, life sensations devoid of breath and pulse, my eyes shut in the terror and wonder of such sound, like beholding an angel that states, Be Not Afraid, while mesmerizing me with its ghastly form…love is celestial murmuration, is sore afraid, is blood stain permanence in my Winter lobe reminiscence…

E. A. O'Connell. November 30, 2021