The Amaranta Project
Featuring 6 micro-fictions and 5 poems inspired Cecilia Vicuña’s 1972 “Amaranta” which was “lost and reborn” when found in 2021. The Chilean artist-poet-activist writes simply as an introduction to her work, “My work dwells in the not yet, the future potential of the unformed, where sound, weaving, and language interact to create new meanings.”
“When you sleep your life away,” she continued, pointing at me with her garden gloved pinky, “you miss the world, you go someplace else.”
But the next day, against all expectations and formalities, she grew, her limbs narrowed, her torso expanded, her chest widened, her mouth opened, her tongue saw the light and her voice made itself heard.
my head because if she’s going to eat with us she needs a nickname & she has to be our friend. one woman is the imp-
One day she flew to Australia. She understood that there was no such thing as an island. She returned. She felt better in the air, out of reach and already deafened.
dances
swirls on spiraled staircases sips on sun flowered
water. I am here with you victorious
Their rage so loud she stopped hearing it. Telephone wires ran through her body and tugged her in different directions the way exile does. The way the world falls and the sea begs when love limps. The way numbers climb the wind like death tolls when oppressors are free.
The phone rang, but I couldn’t answer
There were clouds of smoke
curling around my head
I was only real when I
touched myself.
With each impulse, the current your heart siphons from the phone line will slowly render the vision of Self in vibrant color. Your grey tongue will begin to blush, too. When it swells with the metal-sweet taste of saffron, you will know that this vision of Self is real enough to power its own flow.