journal for new poetry
Stuart McPherson
The Heart Pushes Out, The Heart Rests
Every bloodied nose
assessed in relation to
anatomies of the skull. Clothes
filled out unbeknownst to time or
the graduations of a belt notch. Sleep
suppressant. Vested interests in the grey
shades of skin, blood moon held
beneath eyelid. There are two of us
here, you have spoken to us both.
We lied, the same as the chocolate and
damson lied to your tongue. It isn’t
difficult to split into two when partitioned by
glass. We, and by that I mean us, deny all
in the same way a river denies the weight of
a dying salmon. To float down
rapids as two separate pieces of a
knotted branch. The bears are on their haunches.
The ovaries, full of roe, ripe for the pawing.
Laid bare on the rocks, your mouth stained with
Auburn is fear. This is our ceremony.
Pressure is an ending, a snake's tongue.
Choose between starvation or rebirth into an
estuary mouth. Water once known as cloud,
once seen stabbed upon the knife of a
mountaintop. Deliver me from trances, from
tricks of the light. Scare me towards the
fate of a dead man gasping his
way back to life.