Pangs—Kirk Jordan

"It’s the sound of breaking strands"

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Kirk Jordan is a photographer for the Arkansas Department of Parks, Heritage, and Tourism--.where he mines light, and revels in the glories of the Natural State. He is dad to three grown daughters, and resides with his nurse-educator wife, Dr. Kerry Jordan, and her elderly parents in Conway AR.

Pangs

by Kirk Jordan

"For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now."
(Romans 8:22 KJV)

It’s the sound 
of flailing. Ten-thousand beetles 
on their backs, stuck to the tar of Route 66, 
shells splitting like popcorn. 

It's the sound 
of a braking, thick thud and swerve,
the doe in the ditch, 
but not done for.

It’s the sound
of popping umbrellas, vulture kings 
with fingered wings cupping
a hot thermal stench.

It’s the sound 
of breaking strands, the twang
of a spastic web, moth in the mouth
of a powdered orb-weaver.
                     
It's the curdling anguish
of ten thousand wolves,
the howl
of a Syrian wife.

It’s the dead plinky plink
at the end of the scale,
the clink of porcelain on glass,
beak upon bone.

It’s a low steady moan --
A groan in the wind
in the trees, in our ears
in the atoms, in our

backs


It’s a long pregnant          
                           pause,
the push

of creation 
jammed in the pelvis, 

waiting
waiting



waiting.

---

Photo by Nick Kwan on Unsplash