O Empress, What Primal Spark? (this poem forthcoming in Fairy Tale Review)
Belief in an I a primal giver of griefs, fever of gifts and giving yet. Grafts a shiver if ever I like Demeter like taken away got back barren and a barren land backed into. Grows and grows fallacy in abundance skirt gathering a silverer of prim rose up rose-rose tuft I said what to it and it un-risen why her symbol is unleavened. I baked it from an invented receipt. I bought it for the house to look nicer than. I laid it just across and lay in it and was kidnapped. Just as planned I failed to lay it womblike, failed just to womb. One death to it then found my self aloft, puissant and ruling over it in anger. And some She can rear back in just the form to untime me. I stay uniform and you are near ready to be born, high Magician of the really real. The unusual real. The sensual all things of the proven realm under stood as Primal, as the first and likeliest genitive.
XXI The Universe
It was Orphic, equally responsible and all star- ry day shards. Stubborn. It was refusing any parent- age. Star- monster at play. No one would ob- ject, it was
certain. Sentient, she was
a sentient being damn it! Not just snaky leg and sort of slut- ty on the ex- terior. Struggle- d with her main form. Born reptil- ian, somewhere learned to walk
this way. Coiled
loosely on the orb, it was tell- ing her circular, it was afraid of the scissor- pince-ers,
not for her. Or both
a sheep rais- ing tribe spun tight- ly both egg both wool both work- ing equally hard for power. Why not just take an eye out?
I farm the most minutes between holding everything in and held. I break the season with this: a limited number of days and the odd ones cached for stimulation. Truck, truck. Signaling for a deposit, here, and friendly. It is now I’m asking for something: ask, ask as a temporary immobility, a tattoo affixed. As in a fixed-on gaze, bumbling. Bulbs perennially. And here is where it begins to be over: lift, lift. Am missing you soon.
ii.
I truck in parts for the floorshow. Two parts with an axle-wagon in between, A flat part for the feather-waggles. I saw my grandmother lighting up. Went far out of the way and sprayed her with the objective lens. The Turning Leaf. Never claimed to lie for her. Never wanted her refund, her simulated motor skills. Even when we tried to hand-me down, Something went awry, something static went along with the main bulk and shivered everyone along the, just the backs of their knees.
iii.
Not the second time shin-leaning and disc-like. Can slice through bone to leave it roomier. I felt it was in the proper tone: caveat as subtle as honey is a real meal. Just enough yet hadn’t seen just her in days and mindful a certain entreaty slipping through me. Cannot answer for everyone; hadn’t yet asked myself and now this crisp white is a good half-way gone hints of grapefruit and still the exact same relation to gall. If you felt it there, then so did I feel it erring. Not every single night we get to redouble the optics.
iv.
Doubled, doubled, and like a frond let Down slowly on the flouncing. He was limbed orangu, orange and tan and marked Very peculiar around the ears. If it took seven sets of termites, seven days to build up the ruins, so might he look, constrained. What I said to him might as well have never It was undesirable, that urge toward aggression, Not a real sense of anger you know, only next The next thing I was going to and how it put me Patterned, helical, never make it out.
v.
Fondly at first and finally a full rotation beyond patience. Things done with firm intentions and then undone all in the negative think-loop. He desires the roundest things and she has desires of multi-tubing all things a direct line to her receiving station. It won’t sustain in this way won’t. And it will make us all tired. I pitched this way plus that that I might see it through. I left small bits around the room that look and feel loving. I leave and always near come back. Fresh for the next next.
I started changing my life. A DIY project I could really follow through. I was a grackle for a million years and I flew down from my grackle nest and there was a drill bit to drill the pilot holes. A gate edge I perched on some new thing entirely flecked with chiseled matter and level as the frame. I hammered into the perch a rune to mark a position for quarter-inch screws. I scraped into it a mysterious misnomer and drilled pilot holes and begged a carte postale to make me known, the alignment of my credit due. I feigned indifference to the sweating brow. Screwed up tight. Made feckless alignment good. God gave me this brow. On it sweats a golden age. I will take this city and make it smooth and round. What city? Must have been a map error. There are no rules for how you choose the numbered bolts. Out here there is so little but ground and empty cellar and many leagues to any sober mind. The meter clumpy. The earth spongy. Having these things texturized helps the feet to guide the wobbling torso. Door edge. Gut strings. Door bolt. Dinosaur flashes of a deep deep brave.
