Carley Moore: The Phenomenon of Ecstasy :: poem

The Phenomenon of Ecstasy

after Salvador Dali

If you lay the chair on its back it does not look like a woman.

If you push the chair back and remember me sitting in it,

it will remind you of a woman who was shaped by a chair.

When you sit on the chair you make the woman into

the ghost of the chair. When you leave the chair

on its back, you see the way my neck rested on

the edge of the bed. You see the way a chair that

has fallen becomes the liquid of the room.

You see the way the pushed chair lives outside of its shape.

Like the head that insists on the edge of the bed,

the fallen chair is not the reason we break.

The chair that has fallen on its side is not for you.

It is for the small kings who will use it like a carcass.

Best when warm, but best not seen.

The promise of the chair is that it will fall back

over and over again. The promise of the chair

is that it will be like my neck on the edge of the bed.

The chair is the promise of falling.

I am falling in chairs.

I am falling.

You are not the chair.

By Carley Moore.

First published in Painted Bride Quarterly, Issue 63.

All rights belong to Carley Moore.