by Eva Alter
Gomorrah
Accessioned pearl-pupils. I cross the Grand Canyon’s hate preacher.
Mirrored. Anniversary hubris in citadel caverns. Death drink drove me
to Ishmael’s mirage. Tower of ancestors. Solomon crossed
the Atlantic and I am in perdition. Shut-down synapse.
Buckshot to the temple so my Earth implodes. I am certain
Mom regrets my conception. Play God and yield a mutant mill.
Procedural demon-inhalation. What am I but grief.
In the freak sanitarium I met my Wolf named Pillar
of Salt. Descendant of Cain’s hunting shark. She and I
bunked in the spindle. Traded artery spit. I stole a tooth.
Placed its ridges in the ballistics molting my cerebrum.
I slept. Tooth raptured me to a well near that Shenandoah
swingset shrine. Two children melted in warping memory.
Solomon watched over my ruin. Said it would make me wise.
Gifted me a synaptic apparition constellation.
Towered ancestors played God. Yielded a shattered prodigy.
I drowned off the banks of the Rodanthe houses falling in
the Atlantic at eight until Father yanked my neck out of
the brine. I taste the stinging salt in Wolf’s spit. Grit in my own.
Sons of sons
A current of clay in waves: God-iris
dunes claim surrender of Joseph’s mirage—
Dream-sheaves cement his grazing death. Ascent,
the morning-flesh of consolation-winds—
That cult— Dream-balms shear sight-touch shame to crack
those prison-sheep— Sheol reminds Joseph
of leadlight in pit-laments— I solve sin-
wonders as he fosters field-flesh retreat
of sea-sand grain—I shake the certain
singe of nerve-blood; weep-refresh as a twin.
Amnesty provision-fused tide-exhaust;
The waves resound as shock— I pledge pit-shreds
to my rise; I send harvests as grief-flock.
****