Shel Graves' Sensorium

Taste: chili and toast Sight:   butterflies; flower-fringed meadows Sound: pat; gurgling brook; lute Smell: peanut butter Touch: linens Quotable: "the wine of love"; "kisses of the sun" Extra: solitude A jolt of joy : a dog engrossed in a chew Grateful for: puppies

Taste: chilli powder Sight: a stack of books Touch: silk braids; linen and cambric Sound: affectionate sadness; you may hear it in his speech; cry-talking Smell: patchouli Quotable: "Who knows what babies will turn to?" SNAKE-LIGHT "When a snake swallows its prey, a row of inner teeth help walk the jaw over the prey's body—walking like reading. Walking over a word with the teeth of our mind. To write is to be eaten. To read, to be full." — Snake-Light, Postcolonial Love Poem, Natalie Diaz Extra: Even in suffering everyone's life is precious to them. And many suffering and witnessing suffering wish for suffering to end. It is not a black and white thing it is a terrible, terrible sea of grey.; exhaustion A jolt of joy: "Young love-making—that gossamer web!" Grateful for: a day off

Taste: day old stale grease-laden tater tots Sight: the drooping American flag hanging ragged and plaid in the downpour; rainbow Touch: chill hours of the morning; early frost Sound: piano; slosh, squish; silence-owl swoop Smell: buffalo sauce, cayenne and vinegar Quotable: "Young love-making — that gossamer web!" Extra: how she wants to be rescued again and again; mild persistence; an owl A jolt of joy: a beautiful book cover Grateful for: chainsaws and all wheel drive

Taste: soda water Sight: a plash of red berry on snow--winter bird poo; withered paleness Touch: crape and silk; his hand was very cold Sound: grunting, snoring; laughter; "Dear, dear!"; a high chirping voice and vile accent Smell: spiced skin Quotable: "Trust your anger. It is a demand for love." — Natalie Diaz, Isn't the Air Also a Body, Moving?, Postcolonial Love Poem Extra: anxieties and nightmares A jolt of joy: mom's voice Grateful for: birds

Taste:  Irish coffee Sight: orange breast, an orchard oriole; the black procession Touch: rigid clutch of his dead hand; chilliness; a grain of sand in the eye Sound: plashed Smell: winter air, snow Quotable: "We are all of us imaginative in some form or other, for images are the brood of desire..." — George Eliot, Middlemarch  "To thirst and to drink is how one knows they are alive and grateful. To thirst and then not drink is..." Natalie Diaz, The First Water is the Body, Postcolonial Love Poem Extra: the fellowship of illusion A jolt of joy: seeing a friend Grateful for: dancing

Taste: spicy dirty chai Sight : swiftly moving clouds; still, white; flashes of golden light; black draperies shivering in the wind Touch:  May morning, "May was not always warm and sunny..."; a chill wind Sound: crisp snow and ice; bird song on New Years' Day, chirping; charging across the lawn to bark at the fireworks Smell:  snowfall Quotable:  "We are all of us imaginative in some form or other, for images are the brood of desire..."  "We move within the snow-chromed world: Like-animal. Like-deer. An alphabet. Along a street white as lamplight into the winter, walking—: like language, a new text. I touch her with the eyes of my skin." — Ink-Light, Postcolonial Love Poem, Natalie Diaz Extra: spring funerals A jolt of joy: bird song Grateful for: Sam, Lily, Tish, Mary Shelley; warmth