author's selection
The Hagfish
This is the sea's virtuous achievement:
the head's swollen nacelle nestles a brain-
case for some larger awareness: though
each sex is separate, he carries a part of her
vestigial organs with him, and she his:
it: this miracle of primitive evolution,
the slime eel as parasitic
admiration: lacks a sympathetic
nervous system, burdens a huge heart,
the burning sun of iris, circular
sucking mouth and rows of horny teeth:
blood, gorged in a weave of rubbery
outer skin, pools from the sinuses,
flows to swell the lower body: produces
mucous enough to fill a bucket:
frictionless: bores within the larger
body: consumed by its devourer
it consumes its devourer
from within, suddenly
sheds self of whatever self was, from
mouth to damascened flesh to
disappearing tail, dissolving
into fish, fish dissolving naturally
into victim: the hagfish shifts:
a grinning void beneath your skin:
eats its way out, makes its living
becoming other flesh, internal
organs, leaving only skin and skeleton:
mutilated by desire, given over
to absence, the hagfish survives,
reëmerges, gorged, itself as it is:
escapes, or merely
thrives in the alluvial silt
at the bottom of everything.Оваа е-книга е достапна и на мултимедијалниот CD-ROM Babylonia. Нарачајте тука.
This e-book is available on the multimedia CD-ROM Babylonia. Order here.
