s w i f t s & s l o w s: a quarterly of crisscrossings
The Divine Earthling
Walter Ruhlmann & Cathy Garcia-Canalès
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The Divine Earthling
Why, yes! I can see her in the cavern, the cave maybe, a natural cellar where humans drew shapes and lines blowing carmine, coal dust, powder from the wings of the butterflies, where pollens stuck and where they sucked the bones of some prey they hunted all day.
The goddess has heavy breasts and a large womb, she has been drawn to earth, drawn or modelled with earthling clay. The male wears horns, the beast-like figure also has a gigantic penis.
Somewhere, under a tree, behind the shed, where dew drops linger after the dawn drizzle, I can also see some unclear shape, as if the female herself wanted to hide from the rest of the people, as if she was shy, or sheltered some shameful secrets within her. Has she got long hair? Does she paint her body with pigment offered by this land of beauty, land of plenty, stained and fouled by what their heirs will do? Will she see me hiding in a corner, behind a bush, hidden in the corner of her brain, hidden but visible to whoever wants to see me?
Whether she is Melusine, Lilith, Morgan or Pele – no matter – water, earth, air, fire – the four elements are hers.
She can carve them into artefacts, words, art, lyrics, craft, poems, cards or notes, not using artifices or fire-works.
She just has them somewhere deep in her reptile brain, lizard queen wearing nothing but pink skin.
She has the powers the Minoan Snake Goddess and the Amazons transmitted to her – daughter of witchcraft, wise woman, midwife, nurse, nurturing and catering, caring mother.
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Painting La Cornue: Cathy Garcia-Canalès. Poetry: Walter Ruhlmann.
Walter Ruhlmann teaches English, edits Datura, Beakful and Urtica. He has published close to thirty chapbooks and poetry collections both in French and English, and hundreds of poems worldwide. The Divine Earthling was previously published both in the original version and in its French translation in Délit de poésie and part of the collection Carmine Carnival, published as an ebook by Lazarus Media.
The Night Orchid blog →
NIght Orchid’s Selected Poems→
Cathy Garcia-Canalès is a self-taught plastic artist, she composes what she calls scribouglyphs, a mixture of various techniques and collages. She illustrates several literary magazines and collections of other authors. At the end of 2009, she founded the association NOUVEAUX DÉLITS. She also expresses herself through photography, not as a professional photographer, but as a poet who traded pencil for a camera.
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