Last night,
I chopped down a cedar tree,
only its trunk
was your trunk,
and your belly its bark,
and the arc of the axe
my whetstone tongue.
A waterfall spilled out
and black goldfish too,
hundreds of them,
a pregnancy of tiny scaled gods,
pouring all down your thighs
black goldfish flashes
and every time
I kissed your trembling lips
they’d ignite and burn to ashes.
The fish, I mean,
because your lips no longer burn,
but I kissed them all the same
until all your black goldfish
whirled in white ash eddies
like snow dust around us.
What left to do
but what next I did?:
I put them back,
packed the crack in your bark
with the burnt snow
of all the tiny goldfish
you spilled onto my tongue.
This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.
