( Caption : add to the startling effect ) 

                              this / rɛd / appears black 
 
rill erosion             :                arid zones more vulnerable 
                                                to physical weathering

              cracked                     chapped

folds and sleeves    :               the skin before it sloughs


: a trick of the light = the blood in my wrist runs blue :  

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( Caption : the appearance of dampened clay )

                a sconced frieze fingering geologic time 
a print exposing the empiric impulse 

           to impose /                                 / frame

into recognizable focus

               an emergence of torsos and tendons 
from shrouds of ash a protrusion 
     that dares us not to say 

                                           face. 

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Matthew Woodman is the founding editor of the journal Rabid Oak and the author of This Is Not Your Moon. He was named the 2022 Kern County Poet Laureate, and his essay on a Rufino Tamayo mural appeared in UNESCO Art Collection: Selected Works, 2021. While he teaches at California State University, Bakersfield, he studies at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.