Fire
by Jesse Sorrell
Sorcha McNamara, Caramel, oil and chalk on laminate, 19.69 x 39.4 inches, 2021. Courtesy of the artist.
Fire
Jesse Sorrell | June 2024 | Issue 34
You are beginning & ending.
The world is a sigh on your shoulder. In the sigh there is an owl. Her yellow a light in the night of your life. Her talon pulsing to the rhythm of your breath. Your breath clawing in and out in and out. The feather weight of her body sinking yours a breath deeper into the earth. You feel from the inside out the edges of your body rising from the earth. You could be a cave, a black hole, something unnamed. You could be a bear deep in the soil green earth of hibernation. You could be anything, you could be everything, you could be nothing. You are tinder waiting for the red flame. A whale waiting blue in song. You are alone but you are not. You are on the shore.
The sun is rising in the east.
The head of the sun is crowning
toward the stars. The stars are zipping into dawn
becoming eyelids painted shut. The moon is returning
to a cave of butterflies. The clouds are white strands of color
swallowing each other whole. White is the cloud is the tissue of the eye.
Your eyes are going to flame.
Your ruby-studded irises.
Your pupils dilating
to the churn of
magma.
The sun is shouldering above the horizon.
The ocean is a field of diamonds in the coral light.
The sun has a mouth with the tongue of a lizard.
The tongue is spiraling from the horizon toward you,
parting the sea. Red. The lizard’s tongue is fire
through water, pronging your skin, slipping between
your ribs, searing your chest wall, uncoiling poetry like
snakes on fire in the second chamber of your fire-ferned heart.
I am joining you on the shore.
We are beginning & ending
together. Why have
humans storied a god
who stops creating?
I want the eighth day.
In the beginning was the word &
the word was with the ending
& the word was
fire.
This is not hell.
This is a poem.
when I say I miss you I mean
I don’t know my name
I am a child on the shoulder
of the earth reaching for
the sun
Write to me from the beginning.
I am responding from the end.
My body has become a voice of fern
calling to you from ash and spiral
beneath the shadow of the sun.
All the light is black pulsing red.
In the dark an apple is fire red.
The skin is a molten beginning
with the flesh of a golden sun.
The seeds were planted at the end
of time by the hand of a spiral.
Nothing but the laughter of fern.
The memory of life grows fern.
I am taking a bite of this red
apple with the seeds of a spiral.
I am melting into the beginning
before I have even tasted the end.
Some stopped worshiping the sun.
Planets are listening round the sun
gathering bodies of star and fern
are amused because the end
is to bite through an apple’s red
skin releasing the beginning
from the ending back into spiral.
To say I miss you is a spiral
of meaning because the sun
does not reach the beginning
of my charred voice in a fern
spreading the air like a fire red
apple out-blossoming its end
which is to say in the end
in the I & in the you a spiral
is loosening language into red
dashes of light facing the sun
& scattering shadows of fern
sporing music into beginning.
Write to me from the beginning.
The only thing to know is a fern
is laughing its way to the sun.
every name begins in the dark
In the black light is a pulse of red.
From beyond the shadow of the sun
my voice is calling through a spiral
of flame and the bodies of fern.
I am writing from the beginning.
Respond to me from the end.
In the quiver of the beginning
the everything whorled from a red
light beating from its every end
into a circular burst of sun.
To become with fire is to fern
all directions in shape and spiral.
The memory of fire is a spiral
returning from the beginning
in a voice sounding through a fern.
The pink sound is the sky of a red
gulp of air gathering light from the sun
radiating life from its every end.
I am imagining an end
flaming into tongue and spiral
and I am unafraid because the sun
of my body is a beginning
unending desire in a blood red
rush uncoiling me as a fern.
The bones of animals are held in fern
soft light extending beyond the end
of their bodies through their first red
lunged swallow of air to spiral
oxygen into blood into beginning
into plasma into body of the sun.
Humans will remember the sun.
Fire will ravage the earth and the fern
will return first like a voice beginning
the breath of animals at the end
of our lives firing a spiral
from clay to star to child to red.
In the beginning the light is red
and the red is a flaming spiral
& the spiral is the voice without end.
watch
when I open my mouth
to say your name
I am drinking
light
close your eyes
hear the ocean
travel beneath
your breath
deeper
than the sex of you
into
the fur & soil of you
where
a quickening
pelvis
deep
is
a coil of
scarlet light unfurling
as a fern
through
bone dry clay
igniting
up
your
central
channel
glowing the cave
of your rib cage
flames
licking
your
heart
sacred
fire
neck lacing
your
you could be a sun bear
the becoming
of lava
in your throat
poems
to remake
the earth
the melt
of power
& nations
your whole body
a cathedral
of stained glass
radiating all
color through
white clouds
brutality swallowing itself
your head is full of stars
the moon is cocooned in the center
of your skull the heat rising through your body
could unmake a galaxy your tongue is nuclear with fusion & name
your cheeks are pocketing magma you are drooling neon lava
your teeth are uncoiling a light sparking into flame
a white flame is ferning from your mouth to the horizon
the red of your tongue is parting the sea
the sun
is reaching
for the bodies
of whales
falling to
the ocean floor
like families,
women &
children on fire
in the air
a bird unknown to land
is spreading her wings
in poem
white flame is barreling over the horizon
into
the
hand
of
water
open your eyes
the sun is risen
Jesse Sorrell writes to listen between physical and subtle form. He offers spiritual care in community-based, pediatric hospice & palliative care, bereavement, and other therapeutic settings. He lives surrounded by trees and animals in Chapel Hill, NC and is often found in water. His writing is thrilled to make home in KHÔRA.
Sorcha McNamara works as a painter, or more accurately as a maker of things. But even ‘maker’ isn’t really the right word. It’s too organic, too suggestive of the handmade, or the nobility of a craft. Instead, she is more of a conductor, a composer — the person in front of the orchestra waving their arms about, whose function and purpose you may question, but you know they are important for the stability of the whole piece.
Based in the West of Ireland, Sorcha holds an MA in Art + Research Collaboration from Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology (2024), and a BA in Painting from Limerick School of Art & Design (2019). Her works have been exhibited in Ireland and internationally, in Tokyo, Lisbon and London. She has previously been selected for residencies at Totaldobze Art Centre, Riga (supported by Ormston House, Limerick and the Artist-Run Network Europe project, 2022); JOYA AiR, Almeria (2022); Tangent Projects, Barcelona (2021); and PADA Studios, Lisbon (2020). Her practice is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland.