Sway, Bend, Sigh
That phrase — sway, bend, sigh — is just one of the many evocative images from Maria Ford‘s second-place-winning poem for our 2020 Magpie Award for Poetry. To read the piece, which Magpie judge Renée Sarojini Saklikar called ‘ambitious’ and ‘expansive’, pick up your copy of Pulp Literature Issue 28, Autumn 2020.
Maria has kindly gifted us with another of her beautiful pieces, and we are delighted to share it with you here.
The inspiration for the poem offers a fascinating peek at the world behind the words. As Maria tells us, ‘To look at the incredible photograph this series is based on is, for me, to be right there in that jazz club, in the moment the camera’s shutter opens. The photographer, Lee Tanner, was a metallurgist by day. Of his photography, he said: “The important thing is to be able to be present when the music is being played, because there is a very, very intimate relationship between the musicians, their music, and their instruments.” In this ekphrastic series, I linger in the moment he captured by imagining the scene from various perspectives.‘
New Poetry from Maria Ford
Five points of view on Lee Tanner’s iconic photograph of Illinois Jaquet
i. Heat
Creation strikes like lightning
Apollo lights a fuse to the sun
Jaquet blows on the ass of a firefly
The photo smells like a burn
ii. Phi
all the energy flows
into the frontman’s mouth
tilted back
sucking it in
inhaling every ounce of every beat of every bar of
whatever glorious fury flows through them that night
on that stage, the ecstasy of three black men,
eyes trained on the same spot
pushing into that mesmerising
fourth figure
curving, glistening, elegant
a snake or a swan
long neck craning upward then bending
stretching
her tongue framed at the climax
her sex spiraling, straining
toward that open mouth
she will spit her own fury
into the neck-tied throat
held still at the sacred cut
in the golden mean
iii. Panting
when my man
leaves me like that,
backs off me mid-scream,
I want to puncture his larynx
hear his wind wheeze out all
the wrong holes
but I wait
right where he left me,
vibrating.
Those strong supple lips
always come back, always
return to fly me home
iv. Ice
Every head in the place
falls forward
exhausted
jubilant and spent
Hands light cigarettes
press glasses of
gin-laced ice
to temples
v. Slipping
Lena slips her ring
into the ruched leather hand
bag.
The way it falls it
encircles a tube of lipstick
which she will use later
after putting her hand on
the drummer’s thigh
after fixing her hair in his
hotel room, after.
before slipping it back on
sliding quietly into bed
beside her husband.
To read Maria’s winning poem and for more from Issue 28, visit our bookstore!
Maria Ford is a Canadian writer whose poetry has been honoured in contests and published in journals such as Pangyrus, Pulp Literature, Whetstone, blue bluffalo, cokefish, and was featured in WTN’s Writing on the Wall. She has self-published two chapbooks: dark soil blue sky and revel(re)lations, and is currently developing a book of creative non-fiction verse. She is proud to be a Toronto Writers Collective workshop facilitator. Find her creatively on Instagram @progressivetense or professionally on LinkedIn @mariafordphraseologist.
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