The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Laura Manuelidis

SUBJECT

I like all muddy mucused things
        that crawl in silence on my plate
I like secretions of the glands
        the stench of sea: its gills opaque.
I like the tears that dim the eye
To look beyond eternity
Detritus thrown by planets past
        that crook the balanced universe
These skins we shed upon our love
                To make one metamorphosis:

                        This wine that jinxes each white cloth
                    The oozed volcano, chaliced ash,
                The scramble up the rotting slope
            The ugly child, the bitch in blood
        Man's severed wings caressing earth:
   Old splintered scabs, our sweat cast off—

          For all these line God's birth canal

          Abstract, coherent—And in the flesh.

LOVELY AS DUST

I awoke from death

And read your poems

And they were great.

But they were not me.

Your testicles contracted

To release the sea

As your fingers spread out

The ecstasy of mountains forming and groaning

While your eyes, half closed

Transfused the sky with raining.

Oh there was thunder and lightning too,

A revenge upon yourself—the sun

Peeking out from always

Thrusting its sword

To stalk the vintage;

And your issue was a man

Walking to find you, unknowing,

With a cane that was sometimes a cross

And forever more wanting.

But nothing was left for me

:the dark matter:

                            Except for the singing.