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“Gastronova” by Elizabeth Graehling

your body is already changing

within

a flower begins to court you

raising her head

embroidering her petals

like a malevolent fairy

creating her own universe

within yours

it is as two worlds

turning

turning

as planets within their orbit

willfully spinning clear

then near

magnetized

magnified in one another’s

locked eyes

it is those elaborate reconstructions in museums

that show you the beauty of

the cancerous cell as it blooms with equanimity

protruding each nook and crevice

like small parting hands

that feel their way through the

velvet dark

voluntarily blindfolded

that confident surety

insidious certainty

death

~ Ilona Yusuf

 

Ilona Yusuf is a poet and printmaker. Her poems have been published in book form (“Picture This”, Alhamra Publishing, 2001) and thereafter in literary journals in Pakistan and abroad. She has also written essays on Pakistani poetry in English, and most recently served as guest editor for a special issue on poets from Pakistan for the Canadian poetry journal Vallum. She freelances for several magazines, writing on art and literature.  She blogs at ilonayusuf.blogspot.com.