← v9n2, Fall 2010Poetry · Volume 9, Number 2
Ochre xxi
World door, crimson your geometry.
Our flesh descends the birth-river.
Creaks open to the shrill of light. The doeskin
On the cave floor viscid, matted in the torches’
Orb & spill. Our hands grope, stunned
By this confounding plentitude.
They reach
For the nipple’s new moon. A hand ax
Severs our path to the firmaments of water,
The birth cord flung onto the snow. The new moon waxes
With a droplet of alabaster.
We are thrust before it. The mouth has learned to wail,
To fasten, to conjoin. We swallow & we still.
