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Khadijah Queen from Cuniculus Memoria
O There was a time when I lived in a
cave of milk. A frisson inside, clabbered skin humming, I drank nothing when
thirsty, gorged when
full, drank until my pores leaked. I was addicted to constant
suffering. The endless, creamy fumes: I smoked and smoked and smoked it.
I loved to pat my stash. O I smelled a burning. __________________________________________ (multifactual
chimera) O There are babies in the fireplace.
I don't see them but I know they're
there. Someone keeps singing them to sleep. O A long time ago a woman had to
give up her milk. Nevermind
the children. She wrapped her breasts with gauze until they
ached with drying. A long time ago. She pulled all the wild poppies.
Boiled the leaves in a stew and ate every stem raw.
Wrapped herself with her own thinning arms and wept O A perilous fillet of a body moaned
from the earth. When it started weeping, I fed it
sugar and smoke and bathed it in milk. When a coriander of flesh started
to form, I understood the green as
rhythm. Sang it right to sleep. ____________________________________ (purification: wolf moon) O I stood in the earth's skull & swept my fur skirts clean, I grew tall & taller, shed the dust, shed supple hunch, crown of wild dandelion & ate it; humid breath stretched my weedy neck & bent my arms into scythes: blue-tongued & sharp-mouthed, I stood between beasts & thorn trees & waited: O I heard a howling, but did not run I heard a howling, but did not run I heard a howling, but did not run Khadijah
Queen is the author of Conduit (Black Goat/Akashic
Books 2008). She lives in Tampa,
FL. |
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