"I speak / because / I am shattered" Louise Gluck, The Red Poppy
Orange snake: coiled into anxious smirking:
thick: head: lifted: swaying like intoxicated saint: smelling tongue:
flame licking: harmonized in fighting position:
I think I know: what you mean when you think in voices:
I see you in your garden talking to the flowers: writing periodically in
your note: book: I know what you suffer from: Lie down in the grass:
Go ahead: put them into flowers: I snatch him up: myself: drop him into
a glass box. Let him rile and complain all night: snapping fangs:
everything's a wind: ow: hemo: rr: haging: attempting to pass: as
elite: as polished:
let's all roll in the mud together: that'll erase difference:
Where my life becomes parodic:
do you: dig me? Com: pre: nde? Mot: her: fuc: ker?:
My father and me: are still swimming: like blind dogs: in my childhood:
bedroom: yeah: you like that: don't you: pawing through: lukewarm
orange water: searching : (my father: used to call:
my mother: stupid bitch: recall an itch?):
pine needled surface: for crucial breaths: near the claustrophobic
ceiling:
Where a rueful voice announces: since you were two: a longing invades:
like bone-
damp:
ness:
A submerged lamp clicks on: shows our legs wading:
injects a shivering: I pull the cryptic door handle: less: ly inward:
as my entire orange ocean: flows out.