Silk Poems

The I—and this may startle you—is the silkworm herself. Gendered feminine, the silkworm begins to tell her story, which is at once singular and also historical, modeling the modulating play of scale that characterizes Bervin’s entire project. Her originating desires: to burst forth into the world—and, as soon as possible, to have sex. However you slice or splice it, this poem begins with the big bang. So it isn’t long before more silkworms emerge, attaching themselves all over the cocoon. Then: feeding. Silkworms devour mulberry leaves, overwriting the leaves with their silkworm language, even loaning the leaves words usually reserved for fabric:

thefreshselvage

of leaves (43)

… The writer and the reader turn cocoon; there is always, one supposes, a measure of blindness to desire.
The scale at which Bervin is working, the silkworm scale, suggests a limit to the human scale. Or, perhaps, an expansion. We are big, or small, or both, existing in a time that links and differentiates, like a substance slowly expands and contracts, like breathing. We are always seeking at the edges of things, and devouring them with pleasure.

Feature at Creative Capital!

Work like this iteration of Silk Poems reminds me of how far I can push a poetic practice, where language can reside.