Fissured Tongue Series

Panniculus Carnosus
​by Marie Williamson
​Fissured Tongue Series Vol VI  |  May 2025​

"Retraction" by J G Orudjev. Mixed media collage, 5 x 4 inches 2023

Panniculus Carnosus

Dark spot in my molar--
          Minuet-ed sequin or chia seed or chamber music
          Lap dancing to this mantel growth:
          Skin tag fringe forming after power wash
          Hangnails and murmurs vitiligo
                       All echoing
                                                 The hosanna in a hay fever

                                                 The heaven in a rising hemline

          Caught in the rivulet of a fissured tongue--
                        Each Ponderosa side stitch

                                   In the foreground
                                                            I mineshaft a middle finger

                                   In the foreground
                                                            I pick sailboats out of my teeth

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About the Author 
Marie Williamson is a poet from Southeast Michigan. She received her MA in Creative Writing from Eastern Michigan University in 2022. Her poetry can be found or is forthcoming in Action, Spectacle, Cult. Magazine, Notre Dame Review, and Chicago Review. Currently, she is doing her best to be a well-adjusted adjunct as she teaches creative writing at her alma mater.

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About the Work
It all began with the title and how sound is what first draws me to language. The poem followed in its own way of thinking as it moved through sound before its considerations of meaning and connection to the title. While there may seem to be this disjointedness between title and text, the poem follows its own impulses as it enacts language’s tendency to twitch, shift, and spasm; the poem, then, acts like the panniculus carnosus muscle as it twitches within its form.

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About the Author’s Process
When discussing his poem “Second Avenue,” Frank O’Hara writes how he wants the poem to be its own subject: “I hope the poem to be the subject, not just about it.” I, too, want my poetry to be about itself as it asks the reader to stay within the playfulness of its language to experience its sound and sensorial presence without the need for a poem to be solved like a puzzle or distilled down into one constricting meaning. This idea guides my process of writing a poem by allowing language to collect and navigate its own interrogations of meaning and meaning making.

About the Artist
J G Orudjev (she/her) is a mixed media artist, collagist, and sculptor living and working outside of Washington DC. Her work explores the nature of memory, transformative and transitory states, and the act and language of making meaning. "Collage is uniquely suited to this path because it is fundamentally reflective of the ways we construct narrative from association— the strata of image and context that provide the basis for both our private archetypes, and our shared visual language."
J G’s work has appeared in print both domestically and internationally, has been selected by jury to show in galleries throughout the United States, and is part of several private collections.  She is a member of NOMA, a cooperative gallery, where she fulfills a roll as a member coordinator. She also works as an artistic and curatorial consultant to a regionally recognized framer and gallerist.
Find her online at bio.link/jgorudjev

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