Witchery

Realm of co-penetration, grotesque, affirmative,
I offer you what grows from my chest
in tumor-splendor, gnarled, polished, wet.

I protect you with all my navel blades,
my nipple nails, my kidney mirror—
dead mirror in which cloud fungus is trapped.

Steel pins puncture my thigh, belly and throat—
they enable me to pray with torturous force.

Mask reabsorbing the lost particulars of being,
mask replacing the bald human face with wilderness eyes,
mask sharing veins with its plant juice doubles,
mask whose interstices swarm with pupa.

If, over my tall blue pearled neck, I stare in terror, it is because
foxes have gotten inside me,
foxes are tearing apart my death.

Pitch-black head breaking out in red currants, in spikes, in blisters,
head a field sprouting buds, pebbles, studs,
head issuing a living waving horn,
head asleep, head replete, head whose dream matrix pustulates
the prayer of all things: to emerge, at once.

 

                                                 [Based on figures in
                                                 in the Dapper Museum of African Art,
                                                 Paris]

 

 

 

 

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