GEOLOGIST MADE OF FOG IN THE CONGO
we are so young between the portrait of the heart and the warm sea
we are gradual
impatient
cambrian snagged in the soft fetish
red spleen in the native
his sandals become blue dogs hunting the enemy
and why shouldn’t the wound be supernatural?
the whole sky a lung
drinker of blood
there are ropes dangling from the stars
carbon and the secret squeezed from the wood
we re-imagine and destroy ourselves between breath
counting
orgy and drum
hunger and new emotions slice the throat of the goat
nothing dies
we bleed it from its restlessness
he cuts a knife from the world to reshape a world
and we become beautiful
where there are things the world becomes round
the eyes of the fetish are mirrors and teeth—
pound the body with nails and disciples to sweat the soul to the skin
to vomit the sun and amazing images of laughing or killing
fossils of light and we are the future looking back back
wanting to believe like genes that there is strength in numbers
and it takes courage to love the dirty and broken bones
that are villages
we name the stars like our ancestors
who seem to be running away from us
who’s catching up to who weightless and in love?
—from Rattle #11, Summer 1999
Tribute to Editors
__________
J.J. Blickstein: “My mother was an African-American mystic and civil rights activist. My father is a Jewish geochemist from Brooklyn. Both of these extremes signed a peace treaty, realizing that they must live and work together in the geography of the self.” (webpage)
