Carrington MacDuffie

Carrington MacDuffie

Carrington MacDuffie’s work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Raven Chronicles, Bat City Review, Nth Position, Phantasmagoria, Poetry Motel, The Muse Apprentice Guild, Sulphur River Literary Review. Her first book, On The Dreaming Earth (Subaqueous Press), was published in 2003. She is poetry editor of Square Lake, and has done extensive readings and multimedia performances of her work in Los Angeles, New Orleans and the Pacific Northwest, and also as voiceover for several independent short films. She makes her living as a voice actor.

Sauve Qui Peut

Just short of the horizon
a tiny ship
sinks.
Someone going down
thought he heard the trees'
branches waving,
waving over him
in a sun-tinged sprawl, a blood lace.

This particular sound
reached me as the roots
of black ocean grappled
with the closing distance.

The bloated sky, an edge
of fixed earth,
lean toward the whole
incident as if they are holding
nothing outstretched –––

VISHNU SCHIST

Folded into forgotten
rock
a leaf print
the size of his small hand
read the fortune of minerals.
Who cares
is what the earthquake was thinking
when it made a wish
and the hand shook.

In here only an eclipse
could show us up.
The upturned silver
side of the leaf holds
sway
like some misplaced caress,
and no one saw it happen.
Any deeper,
any deeper and the fingertips
will get burned.

(Reach down —–

OPPOSITE LANGUAGE

Emptiness floats up
climbing without feet, without
touching, from a rank and fallow belly.
Fish glinting as if words
were stored in the mouth
pass unflinching through milk-dark crevices.

The emptiness waits its turn.

Flash of fin,
glimpse of uncloseable eye as it
veers off from the school
whips into position
and treads there.

Unlock the breath in your mouth:
a small swimming void
will come and talk directly to us —–

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