What is finished in the alert swish that pushes my heart's blood between that wing bone and stingray spine? I look down at the drowned gown 5 from the astounded height of my pulse working its military, single-file nose row of slugs in an unending, still unending, circle that hoops my aorta, its muscular thumb 10 swishing the slug bloods through and through like rosary beads like tears congealed to beads, like the poor beaded things you squint at me with. What had happened 15 to the pearly girl I still glimpse through shuffled prints of a happy family of strangers? Her thumbed skull like an onion bulb peeled down to its cut stench 20 and ooze of rudimentary dews. What had happened, as she stood in the sea-wash of her dress, the sin of her uterus stabbing her like a stubbed 25 cigarette in her belly's eye? What had pushed through her blue hood of nerves, this sacred red dragon that came babbling its pink woman's secrets in a hideously slurred sampling of Chinese idiot words 30 only to be dabbed back to its victorian cave, its prattle axed by the thin white tongue of a hand, my hand, this hand, the hand hidden in the photos by a snow 35 of friendly gestures. The blood comes out, anyway, and leaves a stain like a heart between the cool banks of my thighs. Is it a valentine for dwarves? I feel no sliver of affection for its broad loves, 40 escaping me like a note in a broken bottle washed up by the clean hand of the sea to what prince? I do not love. I am a fish, cool, delicate, slit to its blood livers. The droll loll 45 comes pushing its messages, rush after rush, into my thighs, my hair. I do not love. The blood loves. But now it is settled, the dragon, shoes off on the plush victorian carpeting, 50 an unlit cigarette in one relaxed claw, slithered into a turban of coils on the overstuffed couch, hearing the drum of my heart thudding miles above, from indian territory from the New World, a tribe crouched in the forest 55 swatting bees by the thin pulse of the brook, building their birch canoes for the summons of the flood, alert to the flinch of sign language, listening for the smoke signal.
From the collection "Hymns"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.