by Matthew Perry
Pandora
After the “Pandora” painting by Odilon Redon, and a poem of the same name by Rupert Brooke
Her curves and shadows frame the wooden box.
Few even notice that small block of wood,
for flowers sprouting from their hidden stalks.
Behind, a tree trunk rises winter-hued
above her, like a diadem of frost.
Her lower hand grips the box like a claw,
as though she keeps it closed at any cost
and yet her role is to unleash its law.
Pandora’s box would open with a shove,
and life would soon be suffering in extremis
and young men turn from the emptiness of love
like swimmers leaping naked into cleanness.
The stalks and trees and flowers charred to black;
and so many young men did not swim back.
Contretemps
After Chopin’s Les Syphidies
The supple sylph came, each step or jump a pent-
up burst of pure aplomb, her legs were bent
into a diamond under arms whose furls
foreshadowed fleeting turns and tilts and twirls,
until her lines of dance were mirrored quiet
in darker lines, across his wistful sonnet.
He marveled, not a choreographer.
His Cuban cigar hung in the ether.
Later some pewter smoke rose up in small
curved corkscrews, their ascent a wilted crawl
of winding spirals, and so the long loose trail
of breath rose, drifting slowly with each exhale.
The dancers leaped up calmly. Hushed, the crowd
watched. The troupe of pirouetting and proud
sylphs, were sleek in sea-shell white tutus. With
a leap or stretch, the women raised their lithe
pale hands prayer-like to reach, cellingward,
and point at smoke, or remnants of smoke stirred
to curling silver. Rising, he’s a man
burning with his silent longing. Like Chopin,
the dancers burned in the corners of his mind,
until a poem became desire refined.
Matthew Perry is a poet from Prescott, Arizona. He studied at Embry-Riddle University, and Benedictine University. His poetry has previously been published at Dirt Freckles, and his IG is: @MatthewPerrypoems
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