The Brooklyn Rail

 

Poise. Fiercely built by

A cohesive assembly of points, lines, and planes,

          The precise demarcations separate

          The provinces from the state,

          On this side of geography.

 

Bent, twisted, high,

Base with ferocious dexterity,

Unpredictable balletic gestures tighten tough tissues,

Strengthen the muscular skeleton into a unified anatomy.

 

Dissimilar, welded forms punctuate

The image like semicolons trapping a sentence

Or two in mid air, writing lines of sight.

 

Asymmetrical arrays, with stitched greaves, gauntlets,

          Pauldrons, faulds, vambraces,

          Among other armored parts,

          Exude a fragrance of motion,

Quivering shakes treading with confidence in their tempo.

 

A few swimmerets and antennules are visibly directed

          By cardiac regions;

          What appears as extremely durable becomes fragile.

          This unknown pandemonium with piercing marks

          And perforating cuts, rends fractures as transgressions.

          No one assumes they were mere creations of Tsovina.

 

          Robust prosoma—its anterior—is bolted with

          Explicit exactitude, and an attitude for the dance.

          How formidable yet tenuous, this moment.

 

          Marching forward with an elliptical craze while

          Transfixed by the pivotal shifts, from

          Well-tempered comportments to intricate outlines, from

          A remarkable aptitude for exceptional vulnerability.

           This Cartesian dualism is what has indeed prompted

          Each of these two Being(s)

           Colossal vitality.