Body and Book
          Cambium bands, my wanderness wilderings…
               why are you swaddled in water weeds, book?
                              Your mound opens, freshly. Bottom feeder,
                                                  born with a knotted tongue, I bow to you,
                                                                      child of whatness. Changing your rice paper
                                     underpants I notice a foul gash and stitch you
                              with a fox-bone needle. I press a milkweed pack.
                                        You lengthen into me and my chest
                              becomes a maiden’s cones, hair in spit curls,
thighs locked and back arching.
                                                                      Hold me tight as we dance, hermaphrodite,
                                                  your pages encrusted with salty mucus.
                                                  Milkweed runs rivulets. Sign of light,
                                        being in water hoops, asleep I read
                                                                      sumacs for pillows. Like Ezekiel’s wheel
a painting descends from the sky,
                                                  snapping limbs. In a poplar grove ink
                                                                                   babies float down unrolling the canvas
                                                                                          in tandem, a massive sheet revealed
                                                            by spidery lightning, whipped by gusts.
                                                                      Embers of characters burn on tree
                                        stump faces—I praise these ideogram lines,
                                        engraving language in sick heartwood.