Jupiter
Lead poisoning: Zinc protoporphyrin (ZPP) is a compound
found in red blood cells
when heme production is inhibited
by lead and/or by lack of iron.
Instead of incorpo rating a ferrous ion,
to form heme, Protoporphyrin IX, the immediate
pre cursor of heme, in
corpo rates a zinc ion, form
ing ZPP.
She is dead. She is dead.
The witch is dead.
In your arms, beloved, in your arms to arms
to the glass ceiling through the spheres
she is dead, wail with the old women wail at the mouth of the church
wail and let your spittle run down the grooves of your face your old face.
Render your garment.
Render it down to the bare fat
render the butter that melts in my mouth. Render onto the king.
Render in kind.
Reindeer shall propel you towards the sun She is dead.
I caress the sound of her muscular exhalation. Witness the corpse sweat gliding over cooling
skin. Your skin is clammy, beloved
Beloved, your skin is not yourself.
The pistons of your muscles no longer drive the platelets through the vein
no plasma roars through the caves of your heart metals sink
solids sink
my ear is attuned to the free fall of your matter, my beloved drying, and pooling, spreading.
Your buttocks melt out like wings
your back relaxes down into the earth’s embrace
I watch your color change (the coffin in the nunnery, the old priest, flowers, lilies, rush away,
you and me, all eyes and fingers)
dissolve into a waxy blue
just beneath the surface of this skin this epidermal entry way
flowing delivery system of the tactile erogenous border zoning law past the bars
on the plaza
down the dark road from the factory outside the zoo
protozooic plasticity
the heave of foreign gases
Speed her on her way, messenger.
Cartilage of your ankle joint expanded into tumorous wings cellular lightness too fast
cells that reach far behind yourself do not wish to leave
behind
those who send you on your way Reaching back
you fly forward your feet bound
bound to the gravity of the scene that unfolds like feathers: here I am, I am,
and my arms are full,
and the blood that coursed through our pulsing lips
stilled into blue pools spreading from my one forearm to the next. All my arms are falling
asleep with the burden.
Take her.
I have to wait for this story’s hero. Claim it back.
Claim back my love, claim her name,
make her name resound in the plaza, the papers.
Names may flow in the forest capillaries in the Mesopotamian veins of cork.
Should you choose this mission, spastic messiah
erotic daughter of Mother Ann Lee these names might creep up elder trunks
runic arbors for our willowy, oaken forms. I remain planted.
Is flesh material
the debris you build over, messenger, silver-witted one?
Multiply this transmutating flesh fat food for many,
winged ones, and crawling, slithering and scurrying, rent and dissolve,
fester and maul,
let there be multitudes at the carrion festival. The table is richly decked.
Spread through my salivary glands, past taste buds that dissolve this flesh
map its aromatic memories
sensations delicately affirm my breath
psychoactive chemicals transfuse through the chambers nebulous hormonal home
your scent remains on the pillow for years
my sweet, my sour, my tart, my bitterness, my meaty ocean salt.
He sticks his salty finger into my mouth
taste do not even scream, frozen
startle reflex like a fucking possum his meat on my teeth groping deeper why don’t I bite down
now
shy not release the lioness the panther flesh-eating revenge goddess
no no frozen in the video room of the museum
(Alien’s vagina dentata, my mouth does not clamp shut, Frankenwoman with invisible wires
where I can’t feel them, feminist cock stranded shore flesh politics of too many
nudes) unequal to the trans-cultural transgression
skin color gender caught
what marks out the victim in the dark hollow of the cinema
daze gaze daze days
tactile cinema deep in my throat
In the juicy warmth of your disintegration, my beloved Beloved, I try to hold on to
form
remember these borders lands of the pasture
my garden Eden
form a new terra, here initiate
take your magic,
and I wait, wait, deep inside my eternal friend. Sophia shall rock me.
Here is my burden
flowing toxic in this blood. I bless you, young one.
I bless you and give you nourishment for your path no pure rinds
no manna
but the sweet flesh of my breasts.
Notes:
This poem only appears in the digital edition of Poetry and is copyright Petra Kuppers, PearlStitch (Spuyten Duyvil, 2016).