(Why do you ask them)

You have just                        

sucked     love, o love, eaten            

(to heavy-lift)

the     art of the one you loved

so deftly.

(for you?)

Taken between palatal arch and tongue

        salted featherlight flesh.

(There’s something hard-wired)

We fine things had fine wings, we fine

breeding birds—tumbling molten sing

(to fail.)

hers, we fine bleeding creatures—just, eaten

so deftly.

(Perhaps your hands are)

We are your love-embrace, tuned to

the tangible muscle in the stomach-fold.

(viscera?)

Tangibly lull me, gull me, love—o heart

here is your platter of heart.

(I’m not that nice—nice is a) 

Love—just, survived, o eaten

deft heart-blood, heart, blood, muscle, mud

(shit word.)

molted. We find the guttural tendon

encased in blue breeze—how it stares

(Cut your own steak.)

up at us—the one we have known. The soft

touch of the slight shoulder. The cells

(Eat your own heart)

bore—tusked to life with insistent

thrust. Still try to instruct—we 

(out.)

(Stop begging your lovers)

carried up, lofty.

(to be kind to you.)

Tell me—one, who has

eaten your     own

blood, do you tumble with

molten wings, as well?

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[After Gudrun’s tale in The Volsunga Saga. References: MGMT, “When You Die” Little Dark Age (Columbia, 2017). ]

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