Weekend Work 4/25/22

Some work based around the lower spine and pelvis bone found by a friend who knows I like this stuff.

The actual piece and the drawing. If I had to guess at the animal I’d say probably a deer. My friend found it in a field in upstate New York.

Some drawings of a vertebra that came loose from the spine.

Still life with mosaic vase, pencil, rock and vertebra.

A very rare find, found by another friend. He thought it was a baby deer skull. Quite unusual to find the bottom jaw still attached.

My husband is still going through hell with yet a third hospital admission, this time for sepsis. He is home; he has to go for antibiotic infusions every day. Today might be the last day and we are seeing a hematologist later to discuss coagulation. My husband developed a pulmonary embolus and has been on a blood thinner for a long time. This entire thing started around January 19 and he is still struggling. Sending vibes up to the universe constantly to get him better!

Have a good week. Nina

Unmasked

This face is not the one I wore yesterday. Recast as abstraction, it chases illusions that will pilot my borrowed dreams.  Today I am a galaxy of song, light, color and dance.

If I turn around
will I recollect myself
or pass myself by?

A haibun for the dVerse prompt of Mardi Gras, using synonyms for Colleen’s Tanka Tuesday words “follow” and “lead”.  The collage is based on a Cajun Mardi Gras mask.  I also made the haibun a quadrille of 44 words after being inspired by Jane and Merril’s use of this very short form.

Resolving the Equations

Multiply the circumstances–
What rises to the occasion?
What remains, over and over,
expecting to return again?

Look between—what is divided?
Multiply the circumstances.
What is buried?  Which measurements
contain dust and ashes, which bones?

Around the patterned interval
tricks appear as what they are not.
Multiply the circumstances–
ghostlines projected in the air.

Symbols transforming the unseen–
abridged, compounded, mythical–
saved by neither fortune nor fate–
(multiply the circumstances)

A quatern for Sue Vincent’s photo prompt, above.  This is another repeating form–the same idea, but with its own distinct rhythm.

 

 

Signs

Time slept curled in a hollow tree
–miz quickly

The tree grew like antlers.
It waited.
Like a tree, the antlers grew.

Tree and antlers twined
endured and multiplied.
The tree grew like antlers.

The silence of bones.
Welcome or warning?
It waited.

A hidden refuge.
Eternal, opposed.
Like a tree, the antlers grew.

Miz Quickly asked us to consider a line from one of her discarded poems.  I thought the line quoted at the beginning of the post fit well with Sue Vincent’s photo prompt this week, above.

The poem is a Cascade, a form suggested by Janice at On the Land when I published “Deep”, not having written down what form I used.  Although it ended up that “Deep” was a Villanelle, the Cascade form appealed to me, so I’ve used it here.

Rooster Skull (Draw a Bird Day)

What creates
this form, measured
perfectly
and complete,
a structure to hold a mask
adorned with feathers?

The outline
sits naked, revised,
unconcealed,
redirected
to death.  Not malevolence–
the shadow of time.

Well, we couldn’t miss draw-a-bird-day, could we?  Continuing with the Year of the Rooster, two views of a rooster skull.

I also didn’t want to miss National Poetry Month; last year I managed to post a poem every day, but obviously I won’t be doing that in 2017.  I have an idea for a series involving dots and magnetic poetry, so I’ll start that on Monday (I hope).  And next week I’ll try to catch up on what everyone has been up to.  Happy weekend! and happy Draw-A-Bird-Day!

Postcard Fiction: desrever

At night
lost and found
are reversed and
there is only one
opening

For Jane Dougherty’s Sunday Strange microfiction challenge…an eerie illustration to a Russian folk tale by Ivan Bilibin, below.

There are some truly wonderful responses this week…go to Jane’s post and check them out.

My collage boxes, however, are still stuck in the between.

Deer Skull in Camouflage

I don’t really know where these skulls come from. I’d like to think they died peacefully in the woods and were found a while later. In truth they may have been shot and killed so I guess it’s ironic that I’d paint one in a camouflage pattern. 

I’m no expert but I think this is a young one. Only three points. Thank you, deer. 

Tribal deer skull

I like to pretend I’m a member of a tribe when I paint a skull. I imagine it’s going to be used for a ceremony. This is one of the deer skulls I got last week: a wonderful specimen, probably a pretty young buck with developing antlers. 

Here is a view with the antlers and my messy bedroom in the photo. 

Two Deer and a Goat

A pharmaceutical rep just came in and brought me these three skulls. They are beautiful! They need to be soaked for a while and then cleaned with hydrogen peroxide. This was a lovely gift which really made my day. 

Fox (?) Skull

Found by my friend in Eagle Rock Reservation, he was kind enough to give it to me. As per the genius skull collector Alan Dudley (the book is Skulls by Simon Winchester gifted to me by Kerfe and an invaluable reference) I soaked the skull in a bucket for many weeks to clean it. At first I thought it looked like a large dog such as a Rottweiler. Now I think it is probably a wolf. 

Couple of close ups: