Conjunctions:21 The Credos Issue

Renga
Martine Bellen, Elaine Equi, Melanie Neilson
1.
October:
coldness or virtue—
                  one long line


2.
First a slump
then a glide.


3.
Quasi dye,                       
Routine, surprise, pines—
Comeback land.              


4.
Forest White
erasure


5.
Traces map               
the underpinning,
its allure.                  


6.
(Canny seen
Thisaway.)


7.
“Egg go home”            
Shouts lord as I touch
   (you are subtle)


8.
Girl Talk vs.               
            The Ghost of …


9.
leaf by leaf          
illusions of choice
work silence        


10.
(a) Dangling
Palimpsest


11.
Apple Blue:      
answers ripen in
morning light     


12.
Lariat      
Afternoon


13.
Evening sole                
Thrashers without sight
                     Passerine


14.
Repeating      
the password.


15.
Songster once,        
this knot up-in-arms
retreating.               


16.
Ballistic     
metaphrast


17.
Resting in         
the chaos of the
Middle Ages.   


18.
Eye carving
Catalpa     


19.
Trumpery     
 … hid in the attic
or the spy            


20.
(im)posing
the center


21.
base and backs                        
curls, braids, feathers, staged—
portrait self                             


22.
Enlarged Times
Motion Stance


23.
stutter-step              
defies the image/      
                     obstacle


24.
spring in tears
subtle branch


25.
Second chance            
Found where it was left
Memory                       


26.
Enshrined in
behavior.   


27.
Blackboard work
summer in reader,
“a pen” picks.      


28.
bored     walker
widow     planke


29.
Crossing the      
border that habit
holds us to.        


30.
Anecdote   
Neck I rote


31.
Fixed stringed sound
Of the surf beating,   
Metronome            


32.
Sideshow: Ten-  
Cents-A-Trance.


33.
Sometimes her      
Scorchy face afield
Spectacles            


34.
Mutual      
Compulsion


35.
Swing in an    
ever widening
arc— far flung


36.
more itself   
august suite.


                        (October 1992–
                        September 1993)
Renga is a form of Japanese collaborative poetry dating back to the twelfth century. It is made up of linked stanzas of set syllabic structure with a different author responding to the previous stanza.
In this poem the pattern is three lines of 3-5-3, followed by two lines of 3-3. The order of writers is repeated consecutively and is as follows: Martine Bellen, Elaine Equi, Melanie Neilson.
Martine Bellen’s most recent collection of poetry is This Amazing Cage of Light: New and Selected Poems (Spuyten Duyvil). She is a librettist of Moon in the Mirror (colibrettist Zhang Er, composer Stephen Dembski), which will be performed during the Chinese New Year at Cleveland State University.
Elaine Equi’s most recent book is Sentences and Rain. A new collection, The Intangibles, is forthcoming in fall 2019. Both books are from Coffee House Press.
Melanie Neilson’s full-length collection Palmyra Pieces is forthcoming as of Fall 2017. With Jessica Grim, Neilson cofounded and coedited Big Allis, a journal that focused on innovative writing by women, 1989–2000. She lives in New York City.