Naomi Buck Palagi & Joshua Purnell

no longer nymphs

[Painting by Joshua Purnell]
in a moment the world turned           gray, there’s            nothing more we can do. cartoons         playing 
on a laptop.           tears           in a bedroom and sizzle             of sausage from the kitchen. the fall leaves 
bright but no longer                   brilliant. we                       are no longer brilliant, and              we know it.
                 once the scales have fallen from the eyes, the innocence                sucked from the room, we
            are mired and human.                                  the loss like clay                in our mouths. god too
      has gone, and a grey mist settles on everything.                   we are ungodly human, and the color           
of life has changed.
                                                            a grey mist is on everything.						
									 
                                                                                                                         we 



                                             breathe, 
                                                                           simply, 


                                                                                          through the mist we


                                                   							find one          yellow         sweetgum leaf, we

learn to look closely, we cup          the sweetgum leaf, we blow          the mist away we see        

               yellow, we remember            yellow, yellow             has become            a beauty. turn          toward 
one another, eyes           adjusting in the mist or            the mist was in our eyes and now       the brown
of your hair, the soft             of your hand, the aching brilliance           of a red sourwood tree not aching, 
not aching      much. yes,           the scales have fallen from our eyes, the innocence         sucked from the 
room, and now look.           
                                                            				we are ungodly human, the color of life has changed.




Joshua Purnell:
An artistic nomad blowing where the wind takes him. 
Favourite mediums of expression include; acrylic, pastels, photography, music and poetry.
To learn more about Joshua and his travels 
check out his Art and Travel Blog:
Leaveit2joshua.com

Naomi Buck Palagi co-hosts the Columbus Spoken Word and Arts Hybrid Series. She has a book, Stone, from BlazeVOX Books, 
and chapbooks Silver Roof Tantrum (Dancing Girl Press), Darkness in the Tent (Dusie Kollectiv), and Imagine Renaissance 
(Locofo Chaps). She has work published in journals including Spoon River Review, Eleven Eleven, Blue Fifth Review and more. 
Her website is NaomiBuckPalagi.weebly.com.

A recording of Naomi reading her poem can be found as Nymphs closeup.
 
 

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