Mantis 22 (Summer 2024)
visceral, velocities
Karen Lozinski
Cusp of Nocturne
Day splinters into sequins
sticky gold wraps laminate blood orange
and know-it-all pink
hues tossed through a tangle of crepe myrtle
branches frilled purple and white
dampened to shadow and silhouette.
It’s okay to rest even if your skin won’t let you
The squirrel frogs who shelter in
the shell ginger as diurnal citadel
throw their voices into coming darkness
rejoicing in the recent rains
like the scraping of a thousand happy guiros
Let this chorus create a current of contentment
Roost-ready cardinals swoop through
stitch the grey air with carmine flourish
claim their constellations in push pin chirps
hopping from holly to ligustrum to camellia
every limb is home, but only one is for dreaming
These rituals and rhythms are within your grasp
My soul stirs its way up to the limits of skin
corpuscles sing with oxygen and ecstasy
synapses a conflagration, nervous system crackles
can barely contain the lightning within
I gather the indigo curtain of night
its patterns a resplendence of infinity
and dash into what I already know
striving to unlock what I don’t
A sacred chaos can birth its own bliss
KAREN LOZINSKI is a New York City native who lives in New Orleans. She’s a writer, poet, artist, photographer, and musician who earned her MFA at the California Institute of the Arts. Her photographs and artwork have been in multiple shows and are widely published, and a selection of her music photos is included in Can’t Be Faded: Twenty Years in the New Orleans Brass Band Game from the University of Mississippi Press. At work on a novel and poetry collection, her writing appears in Talon Review, Scapegoat Review, Red Ogre Review, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Red Noise Collective, and Chapter House Journal, and is forthcoming in Defunkt, ellipsis… literature and art, The Citron Review, and 300 Days of Sun.