In the Wood

in my dream
you are paring my nails
with your teeth: you made me,
you can unmake me,
                                    one bite
at a time.





(what I want from
you is the noise,

that ungoverned
area
of a message,
                          a
letter I can
combine, or rather

soundblots,
Rorschach.)





(later)

shelled from
my first coat,
pared to
the oxygen,
sound, skinned
of the placenta (sister

) skin
yawning
me outwards.





I, a
milk bubble
your motion
makes butter

(we, 4 legs,
4 eyes, eyes
on the sides
like those of
chickens, cinemascope)

I, rising
like a fish to the surface
of water, pause
at the porthole
of your mouth.




pregnant
with my hand,
yards
of nails,
lashes:
a nesting doll,
my egg
has two shells.

(The yolk
is our
surprise.)





I do
homework
every day
with my modeling clay:
1 liver,
2 kidneys, I
make myself
5 fingers
and a tail-
fin
               for
all this water.





in this hot-
house I am
sweating already dead
cells, broken tiles
that block up
the view: the
navel, a lock
onto the world.




my pellucid
puff pastry
of skin,
like ice
fine and brittle like
almond brittle
                          (to
leave teeth
in.)




with sweat
of weeping, the
still transpiring
baptism of the dark, I
am covered in icing,
                            a tart
behind glass.





if this cavernous
body is a distortion
lens, what
alphabet reads
on its glass?





past
the teeth
mosaic, this
mouth of mine
a negative space,
looking-glass with
the dark of the egg,

attractor
of breath
from without.




coated in
flour mist,
chameleon in
milk, I hold
my breath, shut
my grains of light,
hoping

they will
pass over.





and today I
listen to the hum
of your vertebrae,
the inner
space of
             words,
glowworms in
this my
dark.