Terri Witek

tomb pombs

 

 

tomb (luck)

 

two greet w/a palm
chest-high 

their other
hands smudge up 

 to grip hair
so stop your heart 

or use/watch your
head or maybe 

a third thing:
where r we?

 

 

 

tomb O

 

sure the main
news = bestial arrival
of our own blue flesh 

but a subtle dilation
of surround
adds sibilance 

 

 

tomb (electric)

  

in this last S
of dark this O 

w/ a little moldy
green rim 

awk cable to it
press press 

sanguinating man haunch
with clinging cat 

big-toothed death
defend your patch

 

 

 

tomb 14

  

sopped with drizzle
look I followed your
flute-flame

 

 

 

the other tomb 14

  

actually impure
meaning closed

 

 

 

tomb (  )

  

say end
(what was their) 

else it’s just one
more room’s articulations 

of money
but salted by love 

too the stone test 
touching feet 

but no rubbing
cicadas

 

 

 

tomb (rule)

  

what you need down here:                            

a good little barrel of air

 

 

 

 

Terri Witek’s many books of poetry include her 2023 collection, Something’s Missing in This Museum and a new chapbook: copies: I loved you in the hard old way (2024 Sigilist Press). Down Water Street is forthcoming from aboveground press next year: W/\ SH , a collaboration with poet Amaranth Borsuk ,loops the eco-emergency as a crisis of rain and smoke between worlds and is forthcoming in Oct.  Her work has been included in many anthologies, including 2 from 2021: JUDITH: Women Making Visual Poetry (Timglaset) and the WAAVe (Women Asemic Artists and Visual Poets) Global Gallery. Witek's individual and collaborative work has been featured in a wide variety of text venues, including Fence, The Colorado Review, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, American Poetry Review, Poetry, Slate, Hudson Review, Lana Turner, The New RepublicUtsanga, and many other journals and anthologies. 

With Brazilian visual artist Cyriaco Lopes (cyriacolopes.com) Witek co-founded Poetry in the Expanded Field in Stetson University’s low-residency MFA of the Americas; the duo also lead The Fernando Pessoa Game at the Disquiet International Literary Program each summer in Lisbon. Their two decades of collaborative text/image work as cyriacolopesterriwitek has been featured at ARCO in Madrid and in Seoul, Chania (Crete), Miami, New York, Philadelphia, Lisbon, Valencia, Spain and many other arts and literary venues.   terriwitek.com