Blood of an eye: tamarisk gall.
Blood from a shoulder: bear’s breach.
From the loins: chamomile.
Blood from a head: lupine.
A hawk’s heart: heart of wormwood.
— From Coptic & Greek Magical Papyri
Schematic humans … figures of them, & their helpers …
pheromones rise
odd jagged breath lines, serpentine imagination,
L-shaped
for the love of larynx
name them, say them, dis-articulated …
drowned
•
But frequencies in “settlement” contexts … where
scent might rise from
migrant distances & disappearances
child keeps saying keep the bottle don’t smash … my water, my life …
or death aroma, if it come
•
Who will settle … & you? all of you?
what is landing
to transit?
artifacts seem solo today … more horror, & twisted
•
Some things get special treatment …
her head a succulent melon
her neck for example, a slope of
yearning … warnings … something dark
in that jar …
unguent
winding bandages, shrouds for beautiful bodies
or useful equipment covered with ocher … always red in rust …
and hoisting those urgently dead,
& stink of the dead
•
…… Wheels, mainstays: coils and springs, tense feet
pebbles! notice them?
& their incisions, sitting in bowls
lending credibility …
…… decorated pebbles
& from chambers, like strings of agate …
you want to enter to get a dark glow … you want to get them back …
& there might be prayer, mantra, keening
there might be
a boat’s ribs tossed shattered
•
Pre-homo sapien hominids crossed from Africa to Crete in rafts
water dripping from stalactites …
images in end zones
…… ubiquitous makeovers
•
females at entry … secrecy … once … mirror …
now disfigured out of gender
mothers with no milk
and in between … are you ready to ride? or die?
•
Another might be “abnormal water” … tame and wild
abnormal can be very still
six humanoids, one with bird feet
others horned and beaked, very still …
•
…… Maybe, necklace, round one of “other”
…… and a random scarf for the alien
& burning of aromatic wood by the shore
& Minotaur waits his turn
•
Some want to arrive right now …
some hesitant … one walked to the shed, hides
resistant to sea-edge location …
•
Get out of the tunnel, memory is leaning itself to
sweet awe
in the other: makeshift pods … a tent perhaps
•
That kid … apprentice … took long way around, another thought world
he’s going to be oral, open the bottle … quick getaway
circles, arcs, fortification of the zigzag when smoke rises …
says: I’ll show you
•
Kind of a narcotic archaeology?…
shipwrecks
•
…… Herbs speak … you think?
or how to breathe
•
There’s a beautiful fumerie
there’s perfume like hers
[per- fumer = “through smoke, thoroughly smoked in scent”]get a drift …
charcoal scrutiny against intrusion …
2
Working with willow rods that’s the method, bring great bundles of them, put on the ground, scatter them
pronounce them, saying:
“here’s one”
“here’s another one”
“here’s one, there … over there … ”
Willow rods, very consoling you don’t have to be a Scythian …
you don’t have to be Syrian to know this
pronounce what you want to say
& then the ones more like women use a different method
they take a piece of the inner bark of a lime tree
& cut it into 3 pieces
which they keep twisting & untwisting around their fingers
as they say …
“there’s a turn”
“there’s a turning”
“how many turnings in a twisty one?”
makes the pronouncers happy
staying up all night, notice the moon & its macabre signal
& hemp vapor tents on the horizon
Walk upside down in the footprints of the living …
Source: Poetry (November 2017)
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