'Turgid Maw' — A Poem by Yael Valencia Aldana featuring an Oil Painting by Rachel Hall
Flow 48"x36" Oil on Canvas, Rachel Hall
“Turgid Maw”
Curved
maw, cleft,
liquid moist opening,
moisture soft now hard
turgid now pressing, pushing into
petal softened tacky like taffy yielding
inverted snake muscle pulsing gripping
clenching unclenched skin sheen slick sweat hair
some short some long browner bits lighter bits
parted moisten meeting tasting touching
probing proboscis
blushed and bumpy a flushed red
velvet cake inside after the
chest rises, slowly falls
slower the mystery
of morning
awaits.
About the Poet
Yael Valencia Aldana is a Caribbean Afro-Latinx writer and poet. Yael and her mother and her mother’s mother and so on are descendants of the indigenous people of modern-day Colombia. She earned her MFA in creative writing from Florida International University (FIU). Her work has appeared or is upcoming in Typehouse, The Florida Book Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Scapegoat Review, Antithesis Blog, and Slag Glass City, among others. She teaches creative writing at FIU, and she lives in South Florida with her son and too many pets. Follow her work on Instagram and Twitter.
About the Artist
As far back as Rachel Hall can remember, she has been captivated by the sublime found in nature, experiencing awe at the vastness of our planet and universe. Hall collaborates with randomness by placing instinctual marks and finding meaning and form in them on the canvas. She believes that the work already exists before she finds it with meditative exploration through flow. In a flow state where time melts away, only instinct is left to formulate the painting in front of her. Flow piece is about radical acceptance of her body as a female who was shunned from her sexual self by her religious upbringing. Fluid marks mimic orgasmic waves of sexual pleasure. Follow her work on Instagram.
