You and I author a code, like quipu, the talking knots tied in ancient times. Semantic elements of lived memory recorded by the signifiers used, specific knots, though perhaps understanding data encoded in language loops requires someone to live (almost) in our shoes. A system of phonograms hides within twists of words we assemble as poetic verse. You and I speak a cipher others must heed to truly understand, we learned a code over time as we dodged violent hands, encounters in family homes founded on broken trust and long-healing violations of childhood innocence. Yes, we knotted our perceptions as children. Poetry presents ideograms interpreted through silence and the cartography of words. You and I share a cryptograph, a key to deciphering what we conceal - core beliefs - that persist, though hidden in wells of sweet water. The key to the crypt is difficult to discover though it manifests in code talk, the connections made between whorls of sound and silence. The ply of word cords, length of syllables, colours of language ‒ like skin ‒ are only a record of our perceptions. Bound through language and act, an enigma presents for interpretation, the hitch being the perplexity of gnarls presented in verse. Yet the willingness of an audience to untie rosettes composed of sound and graphology, discovers the heart in our linguistic roses.
Sharon Berg is Poetry Reviews Editor at Artisanal Writer. She published poetry books with Borealis Press (1979), Coach House Press (1984), and most recently Cyberwit (Stars in the Junkyard, 2020). Her fiction collection Naming the Shadows is from Porcupine’s Quill (2019) and The Name Unspoken: Wandering Spirit Survival School (BPR Press, 2019) won a 2020 IPPY Award for regional nonfiction.
The Pine Cone Review 