A frenzy—like one of those nights before Fahrenheit,
when the heat was immeasurable, yes then, the bedroom
held me shaking in its black body, its radiation not like,
but is, is the head split but no goddess leaking out,
no beads of sweat but a boiling, but oceans of ache,
but waves of muscle roiling beneath flush skin, a fervor
fierce enough to make the light go out from behind the eyes,
humid enough to swell a tongue into raspberry, turn a laughing child
into vegetable. Lymph nodes so large that they could swallow
man, memory, mother bringing water in a cup. What purple
plastic? What anthropomorphic duck? What water
could endure as the forest of me turned Sahara Desert,
as my animal became a pet surrounded by dead pelts
in a sedan, in a world before air conditioning begging for pluvial?
Forget forgetfulness, I was a dune that believed it could walk
to the bathroom, then a delirious decaliter of sand poured into
a white tub, coffin cold. I tried looking in the mirror but it kept
being a window leading toward night, tried peeking out the glass
only to see my reflection staring at two moons,
blush round each cheek, cheek, four heads lavender bloom,
a third eye the color of dawn, I, I, I, seeping from
the brow’s lipid envelope, tongues outside the mouths
hotter than dog days, canines in the street, beneath
green magnolia leaves, in their ferment, the fever breaking:
I fell dead asleep—woke to a songbird’s solfège,
rose to rejoin the world of the living. That day,
a child I touched briefly, fell, hotter than a tear
on a summer sidewalk and was gone, so quick, so
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