Pre-Fall Forecast, and: All Becoming, Primitive Colors II :: The High Priestess, and: Before Rothko Marked the Soft Edge VI :: The Lovers

Abstract

Pre-Fall Forecast, and: All Becoming, Primitive Colors II :: The High Priestess, and: Before Rothko Marked the Soft Edge VI :: The Lovers Cait Weiss Orcutt (bio) Pre-Fall Forecast after Shelley Wong Berries, sun-dried tomatoes, almonds cracked open under trees, beastsof the land and sea, their plumage all azure, orchid purples, green—pre-fallthe forecast is light breeze, clear skies, nudity. Lilith has found four fig leaves, softened a pine needle in the dew. She stitchesa fascinator, a veil of blue violets, ostrich plume. While he is blowing hot airfrom his lips pretending names are made from the outside in, she and Evetry on the new hats, ground-breaking, every one. All Becoming, Primitive Colors II :: The High Priestess waitin turquoise. Of the split-ripe guava orbs, she keeps fingering the omens; left hand soothing scroll's surface like [End Page 160] airon ocean-cheek. The red seeds which encrust the fruit on the veil, cannot help but bleed cochineal eggs of the scaleinsect, her gem housed in exoskeleton casings crushed by fabric makers, bodies in kilos, illuminating ourface of Mary now virgin, the blush still in her cheeks. The pearl floats on cerulean, Egyptian coronet; whereupon the stars, blackwoodland ladies'- tresses, erect dayflower, little club-spur orchid, and Texas purple spike, snake around each other. Allharmony absorbs the violence of experience— the black and white production—of indigo, slave trade, Charleston, bodies sold, whips, blade strokes, these things take a seat in the temple; the space between [End Page 161] spoken historyand silent history the same as the space between the High Priestess's lips. Her robes and the moon grow old in it. Before Rothko Marked the Soft Edge VI :: The Lovers of the evening in his chapel, two nude figures stood in light; he and he, or he andshe, or she and she, or they and they (love is love is love) looked up; look up andhere's the start of the story; with nothing to modify them but the light that is paint, pigmentation a tube full of bloodgiving color, drawing form; you can see themrespect their lines: they have no seeping out, nor do they realize the mauvevapors billowing in between their two faces. But what fun can they have with this angel above them, the snake up the tree on the left? Community is not a crime, but letthese two enjoy some privacy before God bursts in. Community,moreover, that has been committed to judgment, instead of flowering around the feet of these beings, lurks all above as if to punish them with the forced-cisrules of postlapsaria, gender norms, heteronormativechurch/state practices. Without our protest, representations are as they always [End Page 162] have been—at imaginary binaries as if there ever were a delimited heor she. "We're born naked, and the rest is drag." In the unclothed, palmforwardpose, an irrelevant sky force presiding—we have the vitalreminder of hope. Let 'em at it! Lust is no timid ninny, no precious thing. Let them fall into one another's arms.Know that love is motion, not organ; "I measure time by how a body sways." [End Page 163] Cait Weiss Orcutt Cait Weiss Orcutt's work has appeared in Boston Review, Chautauqua, FIELD, Hobart, Juked, and more. Her manuscript VALLEYSPEAK (Zone 3, 2017) won Zone 3 Press's First Book Award, judged by Douglas Kearney. Cait has an mfa from The Ohio State and is currently getting her PhD in poetry from the University of Houston. She teaches creative writing to college undergraduates, local youth at the Salvation Army Young Adult Resource Center, public school students through Writers in the Schools (WITS) at the Menil Collection, and senior citizens via Inprint at the Jewish Community Center. She is the recipient of an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor/MD Anderson Foundation Fellowship. Copyright © 2018 University of Nebraska Press