J E F F   B A K E R
_______________________

THREE POEMS

 

[the black stone, 8 + 1, how I became Slug Soda]

 

In the meadow a black stone Ratmankin scratched
and a green light took away his eyes and the black

grew back. Circsaturn put it on his forehead and his rings
fell down. Gee turned it over and it had no other side.

The Catfern Guild kicked it to one another and their
feet grew wings and flew them away toward the sun.

Fatmalkin scratched it and his vision grew polyhedral
and reported from six dimensions all at once.

Sweetzle ate it and grew pregnant and black stones
began to rain from her womb. I thought to myself,

these must be the corners of my cape. Sunk forward,
in my blood I felt that planktonic ancestors drifted,

felt the lukewarm sea of a neophyte earth—I saw
each face inside the magma, the math each strand

of protein must conquer to become. I held this
stone beneath my skin like a marsupial come to pap.

Hundreds of others waded until the grass covered
their heads, but when I neared it I knew grass

as an exponential of myself. My mind moved into
the landscape the same way oxygen distributes

across a cell wall—homeostasis of being—
completion—time, the binary inside me suturing.

I am the green swimmer inchoate in my cauls.
I am Slug Soda, the voiced and valved convolved.

 

 

n e x t

 

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