Wild body-poets Ally Karsyn and Angélica Perez floating in a sonic sea of Equisetum hyemale (tall horsetail) in February. The rough texture and high silica content and its utility for scrubbing cookware has earned the moniker “scouring rush,” but to the poet it is better called crackle-pop pony-weed — useful for composing body-poetry.
Feral friends,
In a deep ravine (affectionately a canyon to us) we push our way through bouncy equisetum forest tubular horsetails bend with silica clicks a sunny patch
bids to lay we upon this bed of rushes pitter-patter pony-weed aerial shoots flumes and furrows (everything here is ephemeral but slowly so: ice,
bone, path, and spatter) bending trachea popping back to vertical obedient to sunlight like we, prehistoric presences tending
green fires of summer so distant from spring a fickle twist of evolution gives them tender defiance but requires of us better socks.
Write a wild poem with your wildest body. See directions below.
— Jack Phillips
Ephemeral art by Angélica Perez and Ally Karsyn using feathers from a northern flicker (Colaptes auratus) and a shell from a western painted turtle (Chysemys pitca) — most likely the results of natural predation in our deep ravine.
*How to write a body-poem:
- Dress warmly, hike for an hour or so.
- Find a native place free (or almost free) of human sounds: no chainsaws or traffic, phones off, no flight-path overhead. Take a drink of water, then leave all your belongings on a nearby log. If comfortable, leave some skin exposed (but not all of it, this time of year) for better listening.
- Still yourself at the edge of a sonic river, then go for a soul-swim.
- Let other-than-human presences write the first line, or alternate lines, or all of the lines.
- Faithfully inscribe this poem upon your heart. Repeat daily or as often as needed.