Journal
Cx72 Poetry: MK Dunwody
October 13, 2020
notes on bitter principles
I misheard
my grandmother fed an ocelot
and definitively now I’ve
divined some future
let me walk on roads, steal your shoulder
or sense and death and old trouble
without arms, well
without arms headfirst in
to conch/cave
lily/funnel/nautilus
my daily dose of powder
in water
but first
lie awake odd hour
with your imagined telephone call
panacea, as light as a mimosa
flower redeeming hours slept,
deer avoided, heat lightning
I must have misheard you
mistook a bird for a ringtone
a book full of coins but
when opened, they hover
midair, misread
rather than think at all
at all! not one more word
to right
a haunting
in clay, a palm-sized portrait
each
form a mutable,
directionless
trout
mounted moorhead
if then the door I seethe is a funeral mourn fortitude in a wake their young water
keeping captured tonight so hungry with no Child, you hold a man like he should be
blind, really, he has no one to burn sweet, et cetera, will I ever Lover, too room the
bed open (yes) raining open in the corner (yes) the dreams he gave birth to My body
come never (yes) kingdom for over, my soft blood never sweet but maybe, deaf
lover, you're erasure, crumbs of pearls, tonic and philodendron, rhododendron, a
celibate luxury aperture My body come never (no) absent forever (no) if only oak
timbre or fluorescent assassin but maybe, dead lover, the central orb gilded and
longing if ever sabbatic then you turn over (well) and constant over (well then) with
route to river bank in pebbles (well over) like a language (turned over) a pebble
language (laughable) genetic marker for treasure (infallible) but maybe (no lover) in
lip color your luggage turned offal will capture (tenor) some tender absent pleasure
(alto) or rather my subset (bird bath) of whatever is left over
seek the butter tree
our house bears fruit
without obstacle
if you fish for fruit but
am I the bread baby
blindfolding horses through
a church on fire
eating the god
her skin gets oilier
and oilier, not oil
but like she’s covered in honey
crying honey
if you only read one book
every castle in your dream
the toadstone extracted
a lovely see-through
and tongue swallowed
a bird in the blood
evergreen &
liver & milk
a colony. a warren. a bury. a trace. a trip.