School of Flesh

And blush for a cheek of stone.

      Blush for the lips sewn tight with thread, no speech for the dead

      maker—

      

      You’ve got the razor. You can make each suture snap.

      

      And watch the mouth   

bloom up with foam,

      as if he’d drowned himself in soap—

      You lift the neck and let the head drop back.

The mouth yawns wide its prize—

      

      White thrive.

The larval joy.

      Hot in their gorge on the stew of balms,

a moist exhale—

      as if there were a last breath, a taunt

coiling

      into your inner ear, Good Dog, you dig your hands in,

up-cupping

      the glossal

bed—

      

      saying, Graduate

of the School of Flesh,

      Father Conspirator—

      I will learn it.

      I will bite the tongue from the corpse.