Ivy Vine Blood, a poem
(Poem now also published in Veils of Apollo (2024), Lauren Coyle Rosen’s new volume of poems and visual art.)
Spiral eyes in staircase
Waxen guillotine smiles
Fortune trades in sly base
Lines of broken turnstiles
What happened at the jams
Collision nights, vile souls
Princess thieves, boyish plans
Parcel souls, silver, gold
What invades soul at dawn
At the brick encampment
Terror grim, sword is drawn
Consecrate full truth spent
Moon blares the dragon hymns
Breathes bygone fires of time
Past the last drawn-door sins
Hammers fall, fashion wine.
Photograph by Lauren Coyle Rosen in Eleusis, West Attica, Greece, 2017.
About the Author
Lauren Coyle Rosen is a cultural anthropologist, artist, and writer who focuses on the roles of spirituality and creative inspiration in art, music, and culture. She is the author of The Spirit of Ani (with Ani Di Franco, forthcoming), Hannibal Lokumbe (with Hannibal Lokumbe, Columbia University Press, 2024), Law in Light (University of California Press, 2024), and Fires of Gold (University of California Press, 2020), as well as six volumes of poetry. Lauren served on the faculty in anthropology at Princeton University, where she received the President’s Award in Distinguished Teaching. She lives in Washington, DC, and in Philadelphia with her husband, Jeffrey Rosen. She has a JD from Harvard Law School and a PhD in cultural anthropology from the University of Chicago.
