centipedes
by Christine A. MacKenzie
and sentences writhing along the stomach lining, and upthrusting
teeny rain-gold flowers clinging to that membrane
like a soaked dress to breasts, and the flowers become
useless wet bits in the light: standing in blood-stained pants, and the uproar
of laughter; boys pulling off her favorite polka-dot dress behind
the bush, then mother yelling about ruining the dress,
fishing it out of the trash; rays of light threading
irregular holes of the wet forest, looking up –
braids unribboned, loosening down into leaf litter; millions of scintillating
centipedes writhing with the rays –
I lust over all the sprigs of gold unfurling after rain, a black bead
coming into focus, crawling, behind a pollen grain:
an ant feeding off of a dandelion.
with a single dress worn day after day, unwinding
into a pile of thread loose at the feet of the nude body, and still,
standing free; pulling off the shadows, standing as a giant
yelling gold holes, scintillating in a brash patchwork –
ike a centipede extracted from leaf litter, dangling from these fingers
pinched hard around me: sentences as a subset of nature, and threatened,
turn centipede eggs into pearls; blue mold into moonstone.
twisting, and gleaming in the broken light, I break free –
About the Author