Minor Secrets by Billie Chernicoff
Elicited from the spirit of everything in the available world, or perhaps with the availability of everything in the spirit world, either way, Chernicoff’s quartzose-lirico fantasies emphasize that “[a] landscape, / even a face, depends / on having been / dreamed, / dream comes first.” This face being yours and only yours: “[N]o one can see everything yet.” Yet, Billie, let’s meet among the cobras of eloquence “[t]o turn a word / into another, say, / vase to wave.” Billie, Calliope, wave, lunar energy, with the hand of the Muse, I love this blue realm you’ve conducted with your flaming pencil, your intuition for the prior chrysalis of linguality, and your chaotic cosmological card games. You augment the glistening of “unsayable flowers,” in all the “oneiric intervals,” like a lover who knows everything, swimming as fluently as the owl speaks. — Carlos Lara
Elicited from the spirit of everything in the available world, or perhaps with the availability of everything in the spirit world, either way, Chernicoff’s quartzose-lirico fantasies emphasize that “[a] landscape, / even a face, depends / on having been / dreamed, / dream comes first.” This face being yours and only yours: “[N]o one can see everything yet.” Yet, Billie, let’s meet among the cobras of eloquence “[t]o turn a word / into another, say, / vase to wave.” Billie, Calliope, wave, lunar energy, with the hand of the Muse, I love this blue realm you’ve conducted with your flaming pencil, your intuition for the prior chrysalis of linguality, and your chaotic cosmological card games. You augment the glistening of “unsayable flowers,” in all the “oneiric intervals,” like a lover who knows everything, swimming as fluently as the owl speaks. — Carlos Lara
Elicited from the spirit of everything in the available world, or perhaps with the availability of everything in the spirit world, either way, Chernicoff’s quartzose-lirico fantasies emphasize that “[a] landscape, / even a face, depends / on having been / dreamed, / dream comes first.” This face being yours and only yours: “[N]o one can see everything yet.” Yet, Billie, let’s meet among the cobras of eloquence “[t]o turn a word / into another, say, / vase to wave.” Billie, Calliope, wave, lunar energy, with the hand of the Muse, I love this blue realm you’ve conducted with your flaming pencil, your intuition for the prior chrysalis of linguality, and your chaotic cosmological card games. You augment the glistening of “unsayable flowers,” in all the “oneiric intervals,” like a lover who knows everything, swimming as fluently as the owl speaks. — Carlos Lara
About the Author
Billie Chernicoff is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Minor Secrets, (Black Square Editions, 2022) and Amoretti (Lunar Chandelier Collective, 2020).
Reviews
“No one has ever written like Billie Chernicoff nor will anyone ever. Billie doesn’t even write like Billie. That’s because she introduces us to the nature of poetry in the fact of its utter presence to mind-body-spirit-soul in direct singularity. You feel an actual presence of her Poet at every moment, far in excess of any person you can claim to know or have read. After each reading her poems remain further unread. If she herself met her Poet unannounced there would be more startle than recognition. In fact, her poems are such moments of startle by super-recognition, as if one were witnessing a birth. In a state of wonder one asks, who, what being can now be?” - George Quasha