by Noam Hessler
A Porch in the Throat
It is a wet day
A sock in the tongue,
Double-back and moving
Trying to grasp the meaning of the thing
All claws, hair, pustules — glossolotl,
Unknownable word with the regrown toes,
Words used to cure cancer:
A certain mousy pitch
That moves through the veins like corn must
Or drain cleaner, scouring through
For little bits of drapery
A nibblefish loose in lipid eddies.
A day where the ditchfish
Pop up and down in the puddles
Inflating their cheeks in the lurid shapes
Of kidneys, livers, spleens
Done up in livid pepper-colors.
Rolls of surplus matter gathered up
From around the edges of the high sounds
And low rumbles: wetted yellow strings
Like condoms, like natto, like porkrope.
A blossom out of the speech worm.
Around it we all chatter, taking in
What has happened inside and tossing
It around — a volley ball.
We cluck our tongues as the sausage gets made.
By clucking tongues the sausage gets made.
Labor
The first two lines are lost:
Torn to bloody pieces, shoved below the bed
Reemerging as texts, hidden dresses. When they
Work it seems the work is effortless: wriggling
The way a maggot does, a carsale leshy —
Green & smooth & smelling of petrol
To the touch. The point being that all involved —
The farmers, shepherds — are thoughtless
Fluid.
But when you try to work, to put your foot
Upon the sod and sink it, it is hard (the sinking; not
The sod). But do not circumvent your humanism!
You too have learned to think in microseconds
You call instinct when they manifest in others.
Just try it: control your breathing, feel your liver,
Your growing hair, the little works
That stop your hand from growing trembles. Now
Hesitate: stop the breath, contain toxins, piss no
Thing, feel your body spasm. Forget to breathe,
Forget to see:
Your mother’s name, your drawings, your regrets:
Forget forget forget forget.
And what is left? From high Christian sands
Blow grains of dust — across an ocean iced
And made of slate — to feed the wood. Then
The river takes its mud and washes it out
Unto this same glass ocean where it lands
Upon the shores of You-Know-Who. This, we now
Can understand, is effortful. Reciprocal. What then
Do we do with that dark continent of water on
The other side of our southern continent?
The largest one, with finches in his hands.
He has been watching our labors — our conspiracy
— For so, so long now. What will be left
When he barges in
And takes his turn?
****