Thursday, June 27, 2019

Trojan Poetry 120: "Poem Written with an Arrowhead in My Mouth" by Timothy Donnelly


Poem Written with an Arrowhead in My Mouth
By Timothy Donnelly

          Again the sound of quartz pounding quartz
     into Neolithic spear points
to be hafted onto shafts with tree-resin glue
         and a twine made of fibers harvested from dead plants
     comforts me as it keeps me
awake nights, leaving me feeling equally
          provided for and covered in blood.

          Again history’s blistery tongue in my ear blurts
     the cave of the belly goes
deeper than thought, and is less wholesome:
          the vapors of the breath condense there, sour
     by the hour on the walls, advancing
into pools whose surfaces strobe in archaic code
          and whose depths cradle my kind of salamander.

          At what point in the mud does an act of what
     might be called independence become
possible is the question
          on all of our limbs, not minds, not yet, although
     we’re getting there bit by bit, and then
we’ll plateau for a period before gliding back
          down into the huddle, dragging everything with us.

          And when the future arrives in its vehicles
     to poke through the mineralized
forms we leave behind, will we all be one to its eye,
          or will it make a difference who
     among us tried to stop ourselves, or tried to stop those
in charge, or whether any of us put their young
          to sleep at the end, and if with poison, or with song?

http://www.nereview.com/vol-40-no-1-2019/poem-written-with-an-arrowhead-in-my-mouth/

Follow us on Twitter: @TrojanPoetryDGN

No comments:

Post a Comment