Your Kingdom
if you like let the body feel
all its own evolution
inside, opening flagella
& feathers & fingers
door by door, a ragged
neuron dangling like
a participle to
hear a bare sound
on the path, find
a red-eye-hole rabbit, fat
of the bulbous stalk pecked out
to the core so you can
bore back to the salamander you
once were straggling under the skin
grope toward the protozoa
snagging on the rise toward placental knowing
who developed eyes for you agape in open waters
the worm that made a kidney-like chamber burrows in
directing your heart leftward in nodal cascade, slow at your
hagfish spine who
will bury your bones
investigate a redwood rain or tap
the garnet of your heartwood, bark, put
your flat needles on dry ice to inquire
after your tree family, father or mother in the fairy-ring
next to you, find you
are most closely related to grass
your hexaploid breathing pores gently closing at night, when
did you begin your coexistence with flowering
plants from which arose the bee before the
African honey badger but after the dark
protoplanetary disk of dust grains
surrounding the sun become
the earth you
had no nouns, did you
Copyright Credit: Eleni Sikelianos, "Your Kingdom." Copyright © 2017 Eleni Sikelianos. Used by permission of the author for PoetryNow, a partnership between the Poetry Foundation and the WFMT Radio Network.
Source: PoetryNow (2017)