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Alice Shapiro
Alice Shapiro
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Meditation on the Breath
By Tantra Bensko
Why does the evening converge inside your lungs?
It does not breathe
Out, only in, until
So condensed, it is night, and your hand
Cries, and your hair cries, and the water
Is thirsty, and you break down
On the bridge and lie
Hearing the sky in the water below you,
Leaves biting the water
And swallowing birds, water
Drowning their sounds, and the moon
Let’s you breathe, your breath white now,
Round puffs of xylophone music,
Hanging on the bones of their sound,
And the water leaps
Onto you in drops that you catch
With the tongues of your skin and it is good.
Copyright © 2006 by Tantra Bensko
Nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Rose and Thorn Magazine.
By Tantra Bensko
Why does the evening converge inside your lungs?
It does not breathe
Out, only in, until
So condensed, it is night, and your hand
Cries, and your hair cries, and the water
Is thirsty, and you break down
On the bridge and lie
Hearing the sky in the water below you,
Leaves biting the water
And swallowing birds, water
Drowning their sounds, and the moon
Let’s you breathe, your breath white now,
Round puffs of xylophone music,
Hanging on the bones of their sound,
And the water leaps
Onto you in drops that you catch
With the tongues of your skin and it is good.
Copyright © 2006 by Tantra Bensko
Nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Rose and Thorn Magazine.
4:24 m
Tantra Bensko, MFA, is the author of Watching Windows Sleep, by Naissance Press, and teaches Experimental Fiction Writing through UCLA Extension and Writers College. She has over 200 writing publications, including a book called Tantric Metaportals, which also incorporates her art and yogic instruction. Tantra combines multi-media, hypnosis, meditative methods, aura viewing, and energy work, and play for a process she calls LucidPlay. She continues her explorations of higher states through the genre she is introducing, called Lucid Fiction. She maintains a site called Experimental Writing, as a resource, and a home for the FlameFlower Experimental Fiction contest. Her MFA is in poetry, from Iowa, and she is preparing to teach mystical/ecstatic poetry writing.
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