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I THINK MY BODY IS POLYTHEISTIC, STELLA SAID
because I keep dreaming I’m bleeding and
the sacrifice is twofold, at least it must be because
right before I wake up
I’m covered in blood and the bed
is a pond filled with dark clumps
of algae, but there is no algae, the clumps
are clots from inside me,
as if inside me has turned against me and eaten
what the inside is not supposed to digest
and I sift my blood
like I’m searching for gold, straining
the red pond through my pillowcase when I find
the gold near my feet.
I didn’t know I didn’t even
know my body had made what would have been
a baby. I don’t sing the body electric.
I am my only suspect, my body
the found weapon thrown into the pond— I wake up ready
to comply with the law, like Dido, but the blood
is gone, no trace of the gold or fool’s
body thinking it could make so precious a thing of blood and darkness.
I remember the body is sometimes called a temple and think in my sleep
there is a god who needs to sacrifice the firstborn.
In my case the born was not
sacrificed in the right order so sleep must be
a shaman prophesizing what happens if the gods are angry
or sleep is the murderer and the gods
I haven’t listened to for years or ever are
making me choose my body or the body I’ve made
and I cry in the shower so you don’t see
and I don’t have to tell
you in the end of the dream
how I drink the blood from the bed and cannot make the body outside me live.
the sacrifice is twofold, at least it must be because
right before I wake up
I’m covered in blood and the bed
is a pond filled with dark clumps
of algae, but there is no algae, the clumps
are clots from inside me,
as if inside me has turned against me and eaten
what the inside is not supposed to digest
and I sift my blood
like I’m searching for gold, straining
the red pond through my pillowcase when I find
the gold near my feet.
I didn’t know I didn’t even
know my body had made what would have been
a baby. I don’t sing the body electric.
I am my only suspect, my body
the found weapon thrown into the pond— I wake up ready
to comply with the law, like Dido, but the blood
is gone, no trace of the gold or fool’s
body thinking it could make so precious a thing of blood and darkness.
I remember the body is sometimes called a temple and think in my sleep
there is a god who needs to sacrifice the firstborn.
In my case the born was not
sacrificed in the right order so sleep must be
a shaman prophesizing what happens if the gods are angry
or sleep is the murderer and the gods
I haven’t listened to for years or ever are
making me choose my body or the body I’ve made
and I cry in the shower so you don’t see
and I don’t have to tell
you in the end of the dream
how I drink the blood from the bed and cannot make the body outside me live.
Posted 03/07/13
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