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She was
white fire falling in the distance, swirling vapors
*cover light limbs lifting auras where magnetic spirits
hover - metal glistens at her feet, electric humming
to the chanted beat
priestess, keeper of the keys, say goddess
images of white wire and women working under city
lights - broken neon halos shimmer through de-
serted night - bright smoke behind her and the
supplicants starting to move, to flight, the music
their chanting her voice winding through memory
narrowing down seasonless landscape of dying con-
tinents and inherited strangeness repeating: feel it
in the flames, see it in the smoke, smell it in the
night: six hundred years later, images linger
light laps her liquid eyes, fingers her hair, her wings
-images of rednightsun scorching lines across the,
sky - the roar of the thunder that drowned the
whole world - heat of the sun's core recalled in
streaks of underlighting, her throat and chin - the
sick cities lying wasted and steaming - new forms
that rose from the rubble - her body quivers as they
move faster fanning the fires with the beat of wings
- watch her wield the jewels - the humming swells
as metal pulses, their breath hisses among the siz-
zling pyres - moaning in the love of the moiling
night, cries in the mist
priestess, goddess, keeper, say midwife
she raises her face to the moon - her form, six
hundred years ago, from dead science (but nothing
dies finally) - the baby laid at her feet, the metal
cradle opening slowly - listen to the electric rum
bling all through the circulated earth, the dry flutter
of their wings mother and crystal lover, frail and
tense - with a sudden bleeding shriek she leaps
arms working. . . .
She was
dull beat of wings sloppi
earth's gurgling there -l
sures pouts open around t-
plode skyward - searing
images dance - sacrificic
race when their gravity f
whiteorange clouds openir
inconceivable winds
Priestess, swift goddess, to
mother; angel and eag
phoenix - white wings w
show only webbed outlines
sharply shadowed, now fad
a billion crying the pain,
wings and sing smoky wisp
their bodies, the earth's n
as always - gravity reclai
lava oozes out of the grour
wounds, the ancient diseas
ty of gravity grown rotten a
must - images of politic
powerfed, feeding the sick
in formulated conflict (ne
flames?) clinging to lead
phoenix feeling the final ti
- a billion faces - phot
fingers keening - the cc
images in her mind now
womb: wingless. the first
return of gravity. society.
surely in glass flowing it
backwards or forwards (b
keeper of the keys, the so
again the old machines (rc
ascent?) - and left. Ligl
into the boiling earth -
forms, crisping inside the
sumed in icy time and the
Text by Gabe Eisenstein
Photos by Tom Gottlieb
2 She was
flash of a hazy form flying flapping hands and wings
* legs and whirling hair in darkling tones and bright
speed against the slowly dying stars - spinning on
their eyes images of silver planes and soaring spears
floating across the moon - old comic panels -
icons and windows - faces beautiful in the white-
smoked night
the land dying of an ancient sickness - land grown
barren under incomplete magic - imagined in the
flare of their bodies reflecting light the old fires
which live again from age to age
goddess, lover devilbird? say angel
some races are quickly, knowing when to die, not
wasted in sickness, in sick lands - wet wind rushing
cold under membrane and bone, high in racial
dreams of newspapers in alleyways, wind in subway
tunnels - whispering in the bones of her face re-
called human faces, survivors then, wingless, soon
dead all dead
soft and tense, breathing deep and low - feel in
her flesh six hundred years of freedom, unbound by
human gravities, societies and virus - images of
dark forests, highways and elevators, cold eyes con-
cealed above city lights - peace out of time in
frozen motion
small birds leave their paths in flurries - through
pitched night the flight is over water for a time -
silver wings and night sun: death of the old race re-
membered in flight silent and opaque, the sky now
jet velvet - variations through new cycles back in
the land the sacral fires yet blaze - the metal throb-
bing now to human pulse, the cradle closing wires
glowing to white heat (humming fills the circuited
earth)
flare of lines falling, sharp limbs wings and fingers
-with silence, from the clouds, they plummet ....