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B.Gruesome what comes next on avatar feet,
steppe-grime vertical slash and the bulbous
fascination of forbidden curvatures. Out of the trees
I spy with my little eye and grin with my gaping
mouth, gnashing leaves to oracular gangrene, into
slabs of arctic moss like sarcophagi, the body-eaters
and you are safe and warm in my belly, descending
through ganglia of dwelling-within. Touch the rim of
the marsh-water, dwell in the ripple of its voices,
outward in concentric circles full of severed
tongue-tips. Grim the suicide grasses, wavering soft
and sharp, falter in the wide loops of india-ink
pupillary bliss, the fulminating green. Here, oh, here
in the night-fog with the lily-lamps shining, it is
the sweep of a curving line that matters so, that
whispers inside, a breath of gold dust covering your
feet like a martyr. Did you ever imagine the roses
would radiate like this? There is that sudden hush of
the second footfall, the natural slide of the next
slender heel slapping the soil. Progression, my
darling. I am the beauty of the after. I am the
burrowing hare. The lay of the land like a braid
across the belly of a giant, the fat mosquitoes
thickly humming, and can you hear the far-off terns
coring their hearts like apples? When we come upon
them they will be sweetly sliced into eighths and
shimmering with sugar. The moon is fishing in the
tamarind groves, piercing the water with diamond
hooks, licking her bony lips. Listen and it is all
there, all the hushings and quietings of the moment
after inception, the lay of bewitchment and
bafflement, where I lead you in the half-light of the
fisherman-moon.
There is rapture to be found here among the milkweeds
and the hoof-goblets, smoothing the Marsh King's brow
with wild mint and coltsfoot, closing his eyes with
tincture of vervain, grinding his morning coffee under
the oolong-stars, buckwheat and dandelion root and if
you are good we will steal the brew from under his
blackberry beard. This is preparation, this is lull
and lie, this is a place full of held breath. Within
my amphibian skin there is only a quiver of
hallucinogenic mushrooms, within their rigor mortis
only a cluster of closed eyes.
Push your face into the crow's feathers, they will
smudge you like a tick of sage and we can walk unseen
in this corridor of blank salvations. Dilate, my
child, and take all my waters and reed-boats into you,
bouncing and clattering ash masts like spears and if I
pierce your sternum with one it is only to make room
in you for the crocus-bulbs I send into your lungs,
the petroglyphs of wet otter-fur and clapping clams.
The trees are full of obscene cherubs, leer and smirk
and the flash of plum-pit teeth through ashen leaves,
looking down on you, little pilgrim, dripping their
cherry-venom into your hair. It is such a wild place,
this, so threatening the crunch of acorns under you
flagellating feet, so dark my hands on your face, the
moth-wing lips on your earlobe. This is an invitation,
an offer. We still walk on the froth of the low tide,
still so near the soil-breaking self, still so young
together in my father's kingdom.
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