Voluptuary, and: On Divination by Fire

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Voluptuary, and: On Divination by Fire Kimberly Johnson (bio) Voluptuary Sevenmile Creek in the extravaganceof June, a fullness of flowers: paintbrushand larkspur, beeflower and attendant bees, the cedars sough, the sunfired pinesforge filigree at the timberline.My ballerina sister on the riverbank poses, rod cocked to rearward,released, and retracted, line trippedterpsichorean by the weight of the fly. Her flybox cockeyed reveals homemadedamsels: the Emerging Sparkle, the OrangeSunrise, the Dark Scintillator, and a Green Butt Skunk. A ridiculous scene, tableau pastcliché, with verdure and soughingand blah blah blah. She hooks a splake, flips him to shore, yanks her knife open,swipes anus to jaw. With a finger insideshe slides guts, gore, and shit in a shining red pile. She dunks him, lets the streamclean the gash, chucks him to mefor the icebucket, and here the suckerpunch of beauty: white vault of ribs in their archto the spine, one red vein bulging faithfullyskull to tail, red gills fragile, useless [End Page 21] beneath the operculum, orderedlike layers of vellum. Scales flake offand stick to my hand like glitter. Like silver. On Divination by Fire Or rather, the turnings of fire: first seaand of sea, half is earth, half firewind-Heraclitus knew fire's a showy number, near-burlesque in colored scarves, turningfirewood to ash and heat. One hot Mojaveday, summer wind blasting from the east, I watched a dust devil muster, twisttaller and taller in slow revolutions,all yellow glitz in the spotlight sun, the turning shaft and tassels gone to firebeyond that paltry stage, those cheap effectsof lighting: now turned some desert sign, bare transfiguration. But I'm an easy room. [End Page 22] Kimberly Johnson Kimberly Johnson’s first poetry collection, Leviathan with a Hook, appeared in 2002, and her second is being completed with the support of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Her work has appeared recently in the New Yorker, the Southern Review, Arion, and Studies in Puritan American Spirituality. Copyright © 2007 University of Nebraska Press