TAILSPIN I did not look at the figs. They were shining, gleaming with the afterglow of a mouth where it shouldn’t be. Or so you say. I warned you our honeyed limbs would be thieves in the night. Juice dripped from our eager chins. Imagine the fig tree, its trunk as round as you are tall. Now picture a machete digging in until it meets blood. Call that poetry. Believe me? I once spurted gold from my arteries before I finally patched myself up. It was a good run & necessary, above all else— muse full and filled like a vase, too unlike love to be extraordinary & predictable enough to spew deceit. I could ask you a lot. Something like: Is there any talent in weaponry if a writer uses it to deface themselves? Or: Is a poet’s sword sharp if it’s only used in self-mutilation? My tongue learns its silence in the cleanup of cherry blossoms, which is to say I don’t ask you a thing. Instead, I lick my lips. Find the answer in an animal. It’s me. I was the animal. My jaw hung wide, enough to chew myself to sleep. So what if I ate myself. Someone had to do it: devour the sacrificial lamb & swallow it whole. Its weakness was a woman on her knees— the cadence of reddening kneecaps flush against linoleum. Larger scale, think larger still: left alone, I leisured myself to waste / — sucked guilt off my parchment tongue / — watched dreams dizzy themselves in a tailspin / — let the fruit dry a slow death / — found a way to write around you.
by H. R. Thorn