Wine Skin Slippages
by David Allen Sullivan
Safavid period, Iran, ink on paper,
Minneapolis Institute of Art
O one who’s fallen,
drunk on a path feet
furrowed into being
in Persia, circa 1556,
you pull at the foot
of your drunk friend
who stoops to lift you
out of the ditch—fingers
bunch up elbow cloth—
we feel it stretch—only
to yank him down to
your level. The two
of you too drunk to
stand, stand-ins for
divine revelry, for un-
corked, boozed divinity.
The Qu’ran forbids
drinking, for it’s only
once in Heaven you
earn liquors loosenings,
but Sufis turned wine
into a metaphor for
spiritual flight, and you
two have taken that route
under the artist’s assured
quill that traces faces,
gives your bodies shape.
Your sloppiness is so
carefully rendered
I can count your thin
beard hairs, see the soft
wooziness of your pupils.
Wine’s heaven’s divine
light, and when we slip,
tumble, and take to
the ground, we finally
admit our faults. Then
faith pours into every
devotees’ heart. I see myself
in the subtle, black-lined
rendering of these friends,
witness my own stumbling
into flight, as their head
wraps unravel. What more
must I lose to gain every-
thing? To fall free of ink-
stain-rendered sufferings?
Former Santa Cruz county poet laureate David Allen Sullivan’s books include Strong-Armed Angels, Every Seed of the Pomegranate, a book of co-translation with Abbas Kadhim from the Arabic of Iraqi Adnan Al-Sayegh, Bombs Have Not Breakfasted Yet, and Black Ice. He won the Mary Ballard Chapbook poetry prize for Take Wing. Black Butterflies over Baghdad was selected for the Hilary Tham Capital Collection by Tim Seibles, and published by Word Works, while Seed Shell Ash—a book of poems about his Fulbright year teaching in Xi’an, China—is forthcoming from Salmon Press. He teaches at Cabrillo College, where he edits the Porter Gulch Review with his students.
