Velikanova

T.M. De Vos

The brightest learned
to make chains, cliques of similars
who loomed heavy in that first atmosphere
where one amino acid began to mean another.
This is how higher animals began, and with them,
further metaphor, bad pastorals.

I was not one of those
who could make my chest swell with organelles
or corset myself into a fringy slipper.

I was a minimum, a single chamber:
I asked only waste, not the bright maki
of new cells. I kept matter only shortly
and released it, barely changed.

This is the model of your Annelids, those blunt bores
who pass through dirt like ether.
They are still going: simple orifices
and what is pushed through.


T.M. De Vos is the author of Cimmeria, forthcoming from Červena Barvá Press; a 2015 Sozopol Fiction Seminars fellow; Co-Editor-in-Chief of Gloom Cupboard; and Reader at The Atlas Review. She is currently working on a novel.

Comments

  1. Brilliant. This is a high-class poetry. Deep metaphors, precise use of vehicles, wise play of words. Imagination combined with sensuality and bright insight. Congrats to the author!

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