Spring 2003
New Series · Volume XXV Number 2

Contents · Contributors · Selections · Editor's Notes & Cover Art

MAURYA SIMON

THE SPIRAL PILGRIMAGE

Rome, October 382 B.C.

I mill around.
I spill my thoughts.
I spool them up again.

I dream of wheelbarrows
bearing pyramids
of entrails.

I set fires:
to the damask curtains,
to locks of Silla's hair.

I cannot eat—
I scald my hands,
uproot the garden.

A dead mouse
paralyzes my will.
I shred my veils,

and collect aphids
in a broken conch.
I bury that.

I retch on emptiness,
sadness my
sanctum sanctorum

How to go on?
How not to?
I could drown,

am drowning,
drenched in dross.
Or is this drought?

I'm lost: a zero
minus its circumference.
My thoughts zigzag

back and forth
from this void to
the one beyond.

I am lost, lost—
barely a gloss
on sorrow's map.
 

MAURYA SIMON is the author of four volumes of poems. A sixth volume, Weavers, is forthcoming, and her fifth book, A Brief History of Punctuation, was published by Sutton Hoo Press in 2002. The poem in this issue is from a new manuscript entitled The Raindrop's Gospel: The Trials of Saint Jerome & Saint Paula.

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