Echo Borealis

“WHITMAN WOULD HAVE SALUTED THE FEARLESS WAY MHYANA MAKES A SORT OF RELIGION OF THE SENSUAL.”   – Amy Gerstler

From a suite of poem-prayers and curses written on the poet’s solo pilgrimage across Europe when she was homeless (following deportation from the UK and exile in Italy) to a requiem for civilian casualties at Hiroshima; from a meditation on the etiquette and lifespan of grieving to a crown of sonnets about a miracle cure using dreadlocks to raise the dead; from porn found in garden catalogs and in church pews to an abstract poem of war-torn Afghanistan where her spouse was deployed – each stanza diffuse as the grenade thrown in her husband’s path; from poem-medicine prescribed by medieval poet-priests to peeling back the palimpsest of Florentine art history; from a paean to the demons within us (the criminal tangled soul) to the gods within the chrysalis who shiver off their skins.

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Mhyana’s poetry has been called dark, naked and raw, poignant, political, rogue, irreverent, and sexy. Take a look at these random lines and see if they resonate:

Echo Borealis: “Iridescence tumbles smooth from the northern lights like meteorites – earth seeded with sky. We’ve called the heavens down, tied them to our necks like gods.”

A Piedi Nudi: “I shed pilgrim footprints like medieval sins within Lucca’s city walls. Is this exorcism or penitence dragged along Roman roads? This is my survival: all candles burned low between soul and skin. This is my demon suit, my body hell.”

Baptismal: “Fluvial voices say turn, turn… my skull in their hands, polished smooth, senseless, the way the stone of a peach is round and round the tongue washed.”

The Cry Catcher: “Crying in to the neck is difficult as pumping milk into two-ounce bottles. I stopped nursing when my girls bit. When tears have teeth, I’ll wean them.”

The Wishing Bones: “If we had no need to distinguish ourselves from others, we’d shrug this skin that defines lovers and enemies and opens itself to both.”

When I Was Still an Animal: “Before I hid my creature and took sharp thing inside – bramble of fang, thorn, nerve like mistletoe in my gut with the criminal tangled soul…”

We Are Gods in the Chrysalis: “Let trees stand witness and stones hold their breath. Let feathers stroke wild skies in reverence…”

Shadows & Stone: “Women remember in the nude, imprinted with kimonos’ silk weave fifty years later: pigments turned flesh, cherry blossoms fresh as love bites…”

Rx: “Each malevolence has a cousin that heals it. I fancy Hurtsickle and Heartsease as herbal enemies – the bite and the balm in balance.”