A-Minor

by Joseph A. W. Quintela 

–After Maya Deren

…dropping flower, dropping key, shifting gaze on floor, draping legs in shadow, raising gaze, room surveying, knife resting in bread, falling knife, phone hanging off-hook, record player turning, needle-lifting, eye closing gradually, passing garden shadow, black-veiled figure without face appearing, vision chasing, shifting gaze on legs, climbing up stairs, climbing into sheer cloth, another phone hanging off-hook, falling backward through window, clutching stairs, clutching wall, gazing downward, sleeping other, us sleeping, passing black-veiled figure, shifting gaze on us, chasing after, pulling key from lips, room surveying, black-veiled figure ascending stairs, floor shifting, hauling into window, black-veiled figure dropping flower on bed, mirror facing, cutting out, cutting back, knife hovering, us sleeping, us chasing black-veiled figure, us watching, pulling key from lips, holding knife in hand, us transforming in three, two sitting at table, one waiting with knife, knife becoming key, fingers clutching key, key reappearing on table, knife becoming key, knife cutting, creeping across field and carpet, us sleeping, other helping us up, other holding flower, following other up stairs, other dropping flower onto bed, lying back, other’s hand tracing body, knife cutting, shards of mirror scattering into waves, other walking, climbing up stairs, other entering, shards scattering onto carpet, weed strewn dying…

Joseph A. W. Quintela writes. Poems. Stories. On Post-its. Walls. Envelopes. Cocktail napkins. Twitter. Facebook. YouTube. Anything he gets his hands on, really. As the curator at Deadly Chaps Press, he publishes several series of chapbooks, a monthly eReview (Short, Fast, and Deadly), and a dark-horse publishing collective (rIgor mort.US). His work at Sarah Lawrence College revolves around integrating the disparate yet rapidly dovetailing fields of Conceptual Poetry and Ecocriticism. He is an acolyte of intra-action, hash tags, and the Oxford comma.