‘Liminal’ & ‘Liturgy for the Carrion and the Gyre’

Judy Jenks’ passion for photography began early, using polaroids, Instamatics, and other devices available in the 1970s. She mourns the days of film photography but is adapting to digital. She lives in Virginia and has published photography as well as writings of prose, poetry, and creative nonfiction.

Liminal

Sundered by indifference,
ushered into
a blemished light.

Emergence,
heralded by silence,
cleansed by
grief’s dim embrace.

A crimson bloom,
tenderly hung from a bleeding bough,
dripping into the abyss.

Baptized,
abandoned,
nurtured by cruelty,
strangled by time’s calloused hands.

Forced to wail,
fragmented shadows,
fresh-born light budding
from a fragile sprig,
emerging tenderly.

Eternal night,
drenched in wounds.
Dawn’s virgin veil
breeds monsters.

Embalmed glimpses,
vestiges of scent,
sight, and touch.

A curtain,
sundered and torn,
refused memories
reluctantly drawn into the light.

Time’s monstrosities
rise from stone,
drenched in depths
to which they must
inevitably return.

Forgotten paths,
unknown faces,
fragmented memories,
arriving as unexpectedly
as the blue murmurations of
starlings eclipsing the evening sky.

Our feet
commune with silent stones.

We have
witnessed the tides,
rising and humming,
their fractured innocence.

We have
witnessed the cruelty of
nature:
the earth swallows its tender
children,
unforgiving.

Stone remembers
what flesh forgets.

Time chisels memory,
bridging the living and the dead,
liminal twilight,
forging forgotten paths.

Unknown faces drift
in shadows,
absent reflections.

A phantom weaves
somnolent rhythms,
dismembering
the fragile sinews
of night and day:
eternity’s hushed surges.

Liturgy for the Carrion and the Gyre

Long lost burial, trace the memory of flight,
Broken silence, blue augury of sea and wind.
Solar abode whose voice is the sound of feathers,
Desolate harbingers etched upon the gyre.

Broken silence, blue augury of sea and wind,
Fragile labyrinthine motion, language of dreams.
Desolate harbingers etched upon the gyre,
Silent vestiges grace the verge, haunting shadowed hymns.

Fragile labyrinthine motion, language of dreams,
Weightless carrion disk, circling above decay.
Silent vestiges grace the verge, haunting shadowed hymns,
Serene, suspended, ravenous eaters of death.

Weightless carrion disk, circling above decay,
Long lost burial, trace the memory of flight.
Serene, suspended, ravenous eaters of death,
Long lost burial, trace the memory of flight.

Irving Gamboa is a bilingual poet and filmmaker from Mexico City, now based in Chicago. His work has appeared in Time & Space Magazine, Hearth & Coffin, and other journals. His short films have screened at international festivals including Cannes and the Arizona Underground Film Festival.