Song Against

Where it leaves the periphery of vision, a slithering thread,
where it hides in the prostate, bulging, sealing the urethra,
where it invades lymph, parallels the blood, swollen,
hungry for iron, seeping like dye into hair, eating at the breast,
darkness like soot clinging to the voltage of nerves,
where it drifts from reactors, breaks loose from boron,
stealing the memory like lead, rising in morning mist
as from a shriveled swamp, the powdery lichen, where it roils
behind diesel rigs, particulate, settling into the pores of cheeks,
burning down from the sun, frothing in the colon, the scum
of cooking oil, where it bakes into round sweets, where it hums
in the furnace, twists free from polyethylene, burning the lips
like speech, its coiled syntax, its larvae in the flowers of cells,
mindless, iridescent as copper sulfate, acrid as dung.      

John Allman | “I Reject All Likeness...”
Contents | Mudlark No. 48 (2012)